


The Almighty Inquisition

by dontpanicllama



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Related, F/M, Modern Girl in Thedas, My First Work in This Fandom
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-15
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-04-14 20:23:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 25,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4578675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dontpanicllama/pseuds/dontpanicllama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Catherine Trevelyan doesn't know why she is here, or how she came to be here. She doesn't know what "here" actually is. It looks nothing like her home, or her work, or anything she had ever seen.  One day she was home, and the next she was in a prison cell in chains with a strange mark on her left hand.</p><p>The people here, they keep calling her The Herald of Andraste. They believe she's a prophet of a god she's never heard of. And the group - The Inquisition - promises to help her try to find a way back home, if it's possible, but only if she helps them close the Breach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

Her mind awoke before her body did. Her memories swirled, spinning, so much that she felt nauseous. The world was dark beyond her eyelids, darker than normal. How far away did she get? 

She tried opening her eyes, but- pain. Like she wasn’t ready to do so yet. She could feel stones and other hard things beneath her, sticking her and prodding her to awaken further still. The pain helped her to wake up; her mother would be absolutely furious if this was in public, regardless of circumstance. The thought of her mother’s eternal fury helped wake her too.

“There’s someone here!” A voice shouted from some distance. Yes, I’m here, she thought loudly in her head. Where else would I be?

Her eyelids fluttered open, now that she wasn’t actively trying to do so. She was face-down in a pile of... rubble was the only word that came to mind. Stones and pieces of metal and - was that a bone? What had happened? Why was she face down on the ground?

She shook her head, and willed herself to stand. She had managed to push herself up with her arms just a small way before collapsing, her face back in the rubble. She could hear footsteps now - perhaps it was the police, asking if she was alright. A quick glance left and right showed that she was the only one in the area - had a building exploded? Was this some kind of terrorist attack? She didn’t remember seeing an alert on the telly about something...

The footsteps rapidly approached her, and skidded to a stop just beyond her line of vision. Tilting her head up, she could see three pairs of brown leather boots, giving away nothing. They weren’t police, but then... Who were they?

“Did you see her walk out of that?” One of the rescuers whispered, and she could have sworn he sounded reverent when he said it. 

“And the woman behind her - Maker, it must’ve been Andraste!” Another voice rang out.

She began to groan; she was trying to roll onto her back, to be able to see more of what had happened, but she had apparently landed on the largest pile of jagged stones and who knew what else because every move felt like stabbing. She was able to turn on her left side, and scanned her surroundings: she was definitely in a building, or what used to be building, with smoke billowing from different areas near her. Tilting her head, she could see the three men who were her rescuers, wearing hoods of mint green and other insignias that she didn’t recognize. If this was MI6 attire, then it wasn’t very camouflaged at all. 

But then she saw it, down by her feet: a large green patch of air that swirled ominously. She had never seen anything this particularly garish shade of green before... Not naturally. What sort of terrorist attack was this?

She just stared at it, confusion wafting over her. But she could see... A woman, trapped behind the green haze, her face shouting something they could not hear. The woman raised her hands, and with a loud crack! The green haze was gone.

What... What had just happened?

The rescuers seemed frozen in their tracks, unable to help in any way. She continued rolling, but the pain in her head was growing and growing and finally she rolled onto her back and slipped back into unconsciousness. 

The three rescuers, unbeknownst to her, stared down at her with worship in their eyes. She was the Herald, sent from Andraste herself. She had to be. They had to tell the Seeker immediately, the Seeker and the Sister. They would want to know about this.

They looked beyond the green mist where the girl on the ground had just fallen from, where Andraste had just appeared for the first time in thousands of years, to the sky, where a big hole spasmed and throbbed overhead. If there were ever a time for Andraste to appear and send them a sign, they were glad it was now.


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Catherine is investigated about her knowledge regarding the Temple of Sacred Ashes, and she fumbles to find her way.

She woke up with the worst pain she had felt in quite possibly her entire life. Her legs felt sore and scratched up, scrunched up beneath her as she sat on her calves. Her arms felt limp and numb, uncomfortably tingling. The small heels of her shoes dug bluntly into her thighs. She felt something hard and rough on each wrist, but firmly kept her eyes shut. Her head was pounding, her stomach was churning, and she was sure that if she opened her eyes, she would immediately vomit.

She started to move, flexing her hands and her toes to check if anything was broke or bruised. Her left hand felt particularly sore, but she couldn’t remember anything that could’ve happened to it to cause pain. 

When her stomach stopped undulating as much, she barely opened her eyes. The room was moderately dark, save for a bit of light flooding in from the outside through a small window near the ceiling of the room. Her dress had ridden up to expose most of her thighs, and her clothes were covered in tears. Opening her eyes further, she realized she was alone in this room, a room made crudely of bricks and mortar, and she was chained by her wrists to the floor. 

Panic began to set it - why was she chained to the floor? Why was there an excruciating amount of pain in the palm of her left hand? Why was she alone? Did they think she was responsible for a terrorist attack? Because, even though she couldn’t remember some of the last few days, she was fairly confident that she hadn’t joined a cult to blow up a national monument or anything in that period of time.

She looked down at her hands: her right hand seemed to be alright, aside from a few small cuts from jagged rocks. But her left hand... It had a hole in the middle of it, in the palm of her hand, and the hole was green. The same green as the weird thing in the sky behind her, she remembered, that bright awful shade of green that couldn’t be anything natural. It seemed to be pulsing slightly, not quite in tune with her heart beat but a little quicker. Building faster and faster until-

She screamed in pain as her palm flashed before her: it flickered brightly and her hand throbbed as though she had been stabbed clean through. She tried to use her right hand to comfort herself, but the chains made it impossible to reach. She sat there, palm outstretched, the echo of her shout bouncing off the stone walls, when the door in front of her flew open.

The sound of the door slamming against the stone wall made her flinch, and the sudden flash of light made her wince. Two figures stood in the doorway blocking the light, but she couldn’t make out who they were. She could only guess they were MI6, or some other secret intelligence team, who thought she was guilty of the terrorist attack. She wanted to cry, she wanted to spit with anger, she wanted to go back to sleep.

One of the figures rushed towards her, troops rushing in behind her to approach from every angle with their swords drawn. The other figure in the doorway lingered for a few moments before entering the room, surveying it as though it were new. She was mildly surprised to see that both of these figures, her captors, were women, just like her.

The first figure circled around her, and leaned down to speak directly into her left ear. “Tell me why we shouldn’t kill you now.” The voice had an accent that she didn’t recognize. She flinched. 

“I see you understand the common tongue. Answer the question.” The tormentor continued. “The Conclave is destroyed. Everyone who attended is dead. Except for you.”

What was this woman talking about? Common Tongue? Conclave? She hadn’t made plans to attend a conclave of any kind... She didn’t know what to say. Her head was swimming with all these new facts, and her captors didn’t seem the least bit sympathetic to her pain.

“You... think I did this?” She heard herself squeak out.

“Explain this.” The tormentor pulled her up by her left wrist, brandishing the glowing green palm of her hand just as another spasm of pain shot through. She let out a small gasp of pain as the tormentor let her go and she crumbled back down to the cobblestone floor. 

“I... I can’t.” She admitted in barely a whisper, slightly bowing her head. 

“What do you mean, you can’t?” The tormentor and the other woman were circling her, and she struggled to follow their movements. The tormentor was a dark-skinned beauty, her hair chopped close to the scalp and with cheekbones that could cut glass. The other woman wore a dark purple hood, and she couldn’t clearly see her face.

She didn’t know which one to speak to, which one would be more sympathetic to her confusion and pain and obvious innocence. “I don’t know what that is, or... Or how that got there.” She stammered out.

“You’re lying!” The tormentor shouted, grabbed her by the shoulders, a painful grip, and shook her. Tears brimmed in her eyes, but she refused to let them fall: they had seen her as weak and guilty, and she didn’t want them to think either thing about her.

The hooded woman grabbed the tormentor by the upper arm and dragged her away. She slumped back down on the floor and overheard the two women talking. “We need her Cassandra.” The hooded woman spoke, a small hint of a different accent, with a pointed look over her shoulder.

She watched their movements, as Cassandra the tormentor and the hooded woman turned back to their prisoner. “Whatever you think I did... I’m innocent.” She blurted out, not meaning to sound angry but unintentionally doing so. 

“Do you remember what happened? How this began?” The hooded woman asked, standing in front of her but making a point to not be physical; Cassandra lurked in the shadows by the door.

“I remember...” She closed her eyes, and tried to remember what she had done that day. It was Thursday - no, wait, Wednesday - and she had clinical meetings, or maybe it was Friday? She didn’t remember where her life had left off: she only remembered the strange dreams she had had before waking up in the middle of the explosion site. “Running. Things were chasing me and then... A woman?”

“A woman?” The hooded woman sounded incredulous. Cassandra stopped her pacing to approach the hooded woman’s side, and they quickly exchange glances. 

“She reached out to me, but then...” She trailed off. What if this wasn’t real - what if this was only a dream, something created by the weird green toxins in the air from the attack? They had her locked in a dungeon, so they wouldn’t want to hear her ramblings about a woman rescuing her from strange monsters until she had woken up.

Cassandra turned on the hooded woman and backed her up to the door. “Go to the forward camp, Leilana. I will take her to the Rift.” Leilana, the hooded woman, nodded in acceptance, and swiftly departed, taking the small contingent of soldiers with her.

When Leilana had left, she hung her head and slumped her shoulders. What kind of weird prison was the Rift, and could it be worse than this dungeon? They hadn’t believed her, or had been fed up, thinking her dreams were just lies. 

Cassandra surprised her: she knelt down by her side, gently sat her on her knees, and unlocked the chain that held her wrists to the floor. Her wrists were still bound together, but only by rope and she could stand. Cassandra assisted her.

“What did happen?” She breathed out, looking Cassandra straight in the eye as she asked. 

“It... Will be easier to show you.” Cassandra sounded sad, almost regretful and reluctant to cause any further pain than that already inflicted. 

She followed Cassandra out the door through a short hallway, up a flight of stairs, and into a large foyer for a big building. There were candles everywhere inside, so the room was brightly lit, but they did not linger. Cassandra led her out the front door, and she saw that she was in a small village, complete with thatched roofs and small stone walls. It looked like one of those old Medieval villages she’d visited up in Scotland in her youth, where everything was preserved so that patrons could see exactly how the villagers had lives. She had thought it all a bit silly back then, but she wasn’t laughing now. A cold, snowy wind ripped through the village, and she shivered: her dress and cardigan provided no warmth in this unfamiliar place. 

Her eyes didn’t linger for long on the quaint village - they were immediately drawn to the large hole in the sky, swirling green through the clouds. The same green as that on her left palm. The same green as in her dream, with the woman and the monsters. The unnatural green. The hole was high in the sky but close, hovering near a hilltop not far from where she was standing.

Cassandra paused a moment so she could take in the magnitude of the situation. “We call it the Breach.” Cassandra simply stated. “It’s a massive rift into the world of demons that grows larger with each passing hour. It’s not the only such rift, just the largest. All were caused by the explosion at the Conclave.”

“An explosion can do that?” She asked, incredulous. She had so many questions, more than she could count, but this was the first one to be blurted out.

“This one did. Unless we act, the breach may grow until it swallows the world.” Cassandra solemnly spoke, sadness in her eyes.

She watched the Breach give a small flash of green light, and then her hand exploded with pain again. The green on her palm writhed, and she sunk to her knees with the pain of it. She thought she might pass out; the pain was so much stronger than before. She pulled her hand into her gut, feeling her dress ride up again, trying to will the pain away.

Cassandra knelt in front of her, but instead of offering any kind of solace she decided to lecture. “Each time the Breach expands, your mark spreads. And it is killing you. It may be the key to stopping this.”

She looked up at Cassandra, tears returning to her eyes but she again willed them not to fall. There were so many questions, so much at stake with this dangerous woman who, only a few moments ago, had been shouting at her.“You say it may be the key. To doing what?”

“Closing the breach. Whether that’s possible is something we shall discover shortly. It is our only chance, however.” Cassandra gave her a small nod. “And yours.”

The threat did not go undetected. If she was to comply fully with Cassandra and Leilana at this forward camp, using this weird mark on her hand to -what? Send Morse code signals to shut down? - help close the Breach, then she might not be executed. Emphasis on _might_.

“So if I do what you want, will I live through it?” She asked meekly. Even having only know this Cassandra for a few moments, she should’ve known better than to expect sympathy or reassurance or even just a white lie to make her feel better.

“We have no way of knowing.” Cassandra stated bluntly, grabbing her by the shoulder of her cardigan and marching her forward.

They walked together through the village, Cassandra staring straight ahead and she turning to look at anything and everything except the giant hole in the sky. She was looking for something familiar... A face, a road sign, something. But everything looked foreign and strange. The trees, the sky... She shivered, and it wasn’t solely because of the cold.

The people came out of tents and buildings, standing in doorways and on walkways to gawk at Cassandra, who was very intimidating even when she wasn’t interrogating innocent people, and her, who was being forcibly marched beside her. None of them gave her a smile, or reassuring eyes: they all had dangerous looks on their faces, as though...

“They have already decided your guilt.” Cassandra observed. “They need it. The people of Haven mourn our most holy, Divine Justinia, head of the Chantry. The Conclave was hers. It was a chance for peace between Mages and Templars. She brought their leaders together. Now they are dead. 

“We lash out like the sky, but we must think beyond ourselves, as she did, until the breach is sealed.” Cassandra led her through the village, away from the people who wanted her dead and did not hide it as well as Cassandra. More troops opened a large wooden gate and let them pass, their faces expressionless. 

Cassandra stopped her a few feet outside the gate, and pulled a small knife off her belt. With one single, fluid motion, she severed the rope binding her wrists together. “There will be a trial. I can promise no more. Come. It is not far.”

“Where are you taking me?” She asked, immediately rubbing her wrists. They felt raw, burned and sore from the rope, but she didn’t complain or cry. She knew it would fall on deaf ears.

“Your mark must be tested on something smaller than the Breach.” Cassandra did not elaborate, but simply turned to gesture towards the path.

She walked together with Cassandra, a few steps ahead so her actions could be seen. The terrain was difficult to walk in her heels, and it was cold. Snow fell lightly around them, and it would’ve been picturesque if she had been dressed properly and not completely terrified.

“You seem to be ill-prepared for the weather. Did you not plan ahead to visit the Conclave?” Cassandra attempted small talk, but it came across as further interrogation.

“I didn’t plan to attend the Conclave at all,” She huffed, rubbing her arms for warmth. “I have no idea where I am, or how I ended up here. I couldn’t very well have planned ahead for anything.”

“Does this happen to you often?” Cassandra asked, and she could tell there was a smirk on that smug face.

“Not at all.” She sneezed, and the small talk ceased. 

The path was straightforward, winding through the trees and up to the top of the hilltop where the hole in the sky hovered over all of Creation. In the way of the path was destruction: carriages and crates were on fire, homes were burning, and the smell of smoke and burnt flesh permeated the air. Her nausea came back with a vengeance, but she refused to show any further weakness in front of Cassandra. _There will be a trial. I can promise no more._ Yeah, some help you are.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Breach flash overhead and tried to prepare for the pain: she failed, falling down again on her knees and gripping her left hand with her right. Cassandra came to stand over her, watching. Saying nothing, she simply bent down and helped her get back on her feet. The pain had dulled, but it wasn’t completely gone; she doubted it would ever return to normal.

“The pulses are coming faster now,” Cassandra’s face looked concerned, but that was all she said, turning back to the path and the matter at hand.

After a few more paces, where the pain ebbed to a mild numbness, they approached a small brick bridge. She had to stop - she was weak from being chained up, and then being wracked with pain from the Breach flashes, not to mention the panic of not knowing where she was or why she had been chained up. She leaned against the wall of the bridge and just took deep breaths. 

“The larger the Breach grows, the more rifts appear. The more demons we face.” Cassandra spoke, almost to fill the empty air. 

“How did I survive the blast?” She breathed, asking herself more than anything. Most of what Cassandra had been speaking of - mages, Templars, Chantry, Divine Someone - she had no idea what it meant. But she had survived, when some of those things, that she guessed were pretty important, hadn’t. 

“They said you... stepped out of a rift. Then fell unconscious. They say a woman was in the rift behind you. No one knows who she was. Everything farther in the valley was laid to waste, including the Temple of Sacred Ashes. I suppose you’ll see soon enough.”

Cassandra decided that they had rested long enough, and gestured her forward. They walked at a brisk pace, if only to fight off the encroaching cold, when a green blast from the Breach struck the bridge in front of them, and it collapsed. She and Cassandra tumbled down the new pile of rubble, falling heavily onto the frozen river. Her legs felt sore from the fall and the icy cold of the river, but she held herself up, looking around to see where they had landed. 

Another green blast shot down from the sky, this one slower, and it seemed to be headed right for them. She slid back on the ice, pushing herself out of the way as fast as she could while Cassandra, who was already standing and brushing herself off, pulled her shield from her back and slid it on her left arm. Just as the second green blast hit the river just in front of them, Cassandra pulled her weapon and waited. 

The green blast was not a bomb, or a gunshot: the Breach had fired down a demon to take them out. The demon was large, a great deal taller than her, with thin arms and long fingers that tapered into sharp talons. It seemed to smile at her, its teeth jagged and sharp like its claws. 

She tried to stand, wanted to scream and run away, but Cassandra held her position. “Stay behind me!” Cassandra bellowed, and charged the demon.

She managed to stand and inch backwards; her heels were sliding on the ice, and she felt very weak. But while Cassandra was fighting the demon, the green mist slid down the river towards her: it was turning black and bubbling angrily, shooting another plume of green mist into the air, and her eyebrows went way up: the Breach had sent two demons. One for each of them. 

She looked around. Cassandra was engaged with the first demon, and hadn’t even noticed the second demon bubbling up. And she had nothing on her person with which she could fight a demon - unless she tried to beat it to death with heels. There were many pieces of debris near her from the bridge collapse: she saw two long staves that might’ve been javelins, a large bow that looked extremely worn, and a greatsword that was longer than she was tall. 

Beside those things were two wicked daggers, both curved and pointed. She rushed over and picked them up. They seemed strange in her delicate hands; she had barely been allowed to handle butter knives at the dinner table, let alone a weapon of any kind. If her mother could see her now.

She spun around to see the demon had fully formed from the bubbling black ooze of the Breach, and her heart shot into her throat. She had never been one for confrontation or combat of any kind, but some kind of instinct kicked in: she made a series of tiny jabs at the demon, getting in close to strike and then immediately backing a safe distance away from the talons on his arms. He howled in pain over and over. 

She skidded once and almost fell, twisting her ankle in the process. Without hesitating, she slid her shoes off and continued to fight in her bare feet; now able to better grip the slippery surface, she danced around the demon, slashing wildly hoping to basically just make any sort of contact with it. She grimaced every time she put weight on the twisted ankle, but she would prefer having a hurt ankle than being dead any day. The demon tried to feint and rush to her weaker side, and she took advantage of his weakness and stabbed him through the chest.

With a howl, the demon exploded into a burst of green mist with a loud hiss. Panting at the effort, she saw Cassandra do the same and stab her demon through the chest. Without slowing down, Cassandra turned to face her.

“It’s over,” she said, still panting but with a small smile on her face, while Cassandra came closer, her sword pointed. 

“Drop your weapon! Now!” Cassandra snarled, pointing the sword at her throat.

She stared at the sword, and then at Cassandra’s face. Cassandra could not hide her emotions now: there was anger and distrust written all over it. Without a fight or complaint, she simply twisted the hilts of the knives to face Cassandra, giving her complete control. Cassandra, to her surprise, sheathed her own sword but did not reach for the knives. 

“I cannot protect you, and I cannot expect you to be defenseless.” Cassandra turned her back. “Keep your weapons.” 

She nodded in understanding. She wore a small belt looped around her dress, and gingerly tucked the knives into it. It was a strange sight to be sure: a young, barefoot girl with a floral dress and two deadly-looking daggers hanging from her belt. 

When she was finally done, she looked up to see Cassandra watching. “I should remember you did not attempt to run.” Cassandra spoke, and she couldn’t make out exactly what Cassandra meant by that. Was it because she didn’t try to run away from Cassandra, heading for freedom, or run away from the fight, choosing to defend herself? She hoped it was the latter.

“Thank you,” was all she thought to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think the opening scenes, where everything is explained, is such a wonderful part of the story - especially so if you're a third party like Catherine who has no idea what's going on. It will be interesting for her to learn all about Thedas without knowing anything about it.
> 
> Sorry she hasn't actually gotten to a rift yet, let alone the Breach. I'm terribly wordy. 95% of the dialogue is taken from the game. Alas, Catherine is the only thing solely mine.


	3. Chapter 2

As they could not continue on the regular path, Cassandra led them further down the frozen river. With her heels in her hand, she walked carefully, trying not to slip. She found she wasn’t as cold anymore: adrenaline was pumping through her veins, and it was enough to keep her warm. She had never done anything like this before in her life: she didn’t know where she was, what kind of dream world she was in, but she had just killed a _demon_! With her own hands! She was terrified and thrilled simultaneously.

It was slow going, as the snow was swirling around them and the path changed from frozen river and rocky terrain to stone steps leading up the hilltop. She put her heels back on, to give her feet some protection from the elements, but her ankle throbbed more; Cassandra gave her something to drink that tasted like cold, bitter tea but reduced the overall pain she was feeling by a considerable amount. Cassandra seemed to hold her in higher regard, although not high enough to guarantee freedom or even safety.

“We’re getting close to the rift! You can hear the fighting!” Cassandra called from behind as they trudged their way up the stone steps. 

“Who’s fighting?” She asked, panting again. 

“You’ll see soon. We must help them,” was all that Cassandra elaborated on the subject.

At the top of the steps, there was a large fire, and she ducked around it. They stood on a small ledge, presumably the top of a staircase, but the stairs had been blown apart. Ahead of them, she could see two of the soldiers in mint green fighting more demons alongside two other warriors. One was tall and lithe, with a bald head and pale skin the color of the swirling snow. He twirled a staff in his hands with grace, firing what looked like snowballs at the demons. The other was short, shorter than her, but square, and he fired a large crossbow with deadly accuracy.

Cassandra jumped off the small ledge and made her way over to the warriors, pulling her shield on her arm and releasing her sword from its scabbard. Watching Cassandra, she jumped a little more delicately, avoiding putting too much weight on her twisted ankle and carefully pulling the daggers off of her belt. She followed Cassandra’s lead, charging past the men with the staff and crossbow and continued her tactic from before: getting close to get in a series of jabs with her daggers, and then stepping away before the talons could get her. This time, she was conscious of the arrows and snowballs that were flying beside her to hit the demons as well; she wasn’t too worried about being hit with a snowball, but she wanted to avoid those arrows.

The last demon exploded with a hiss and a crack. She looked over their heads, and saw what must be a rift there: it looked like a green crystal, considerably smaller than the big whole in the sky, that twirled and contorted on its own, surrounded by green haze. She gulped, remembering that Cassandra had said the mark on her hand could help with these rifts in some way. But how?

The thin, pale man answered that question: without a word, he strode over and lifted her left arm over her head, her palm facing the rift. Immediately, she felt something connect with the rift overhead, and she felt the most curious sensation, as though her sadness, her fatigue, her anger, her despair, were all being channeled into her hand and forcibly shot out of her. Her palm felt aflame. After a few seconds of this, the rift overhead exploded with a loud crack. 

She wrenched her wrist out of the thin, pale man’s hands, and looked at him. His face seemed ordinary and unrecognizable, except for his ears: they were long and pointed, and she somehow knew, without having been told, that he was an elf. Hell, if there were demons in this dream world that wanted to kill her and glowing green holes in the sky, there could certainly be elves who fired magic snowballs. Who was to say one was more far-fetched than the other?

“What did you do?” She asked, rather indignantly, clutching her left hand. The constant throbbing of pain she’d felt since she had been in the dungeon was still there, but it had decreased slightly. She hadn’t thought it possible.

“I did nothing. The credit is yours.” The elf gestured back to her.

She looked down at the mark on her hand. “You mean this?” Was this what Cassandra had suspected her mark could do to the rifts? She hadn’t seem surprised or alarmed to see these two warriors (the other troops in mint green having run off ahead of them), which she took to mean that this was the smaller rift that was her test. And from the lack of rift in the sky, she passed.

“Whatever magic opened the Breach in the sky also placed that mark upon your hand.” The elf continue to lecture; she got the sense that ‘lecture’ was his default tone of voice. “I theorized the mark might be able to close the rifts that have opened in the Breach’s wake - and it seems I was correct.”

“You mean it could also close the Breach itself?” Cassandra strode up to them, her weapon sheathed. Only the shorter man lingered back, making minute adjustments to his crossbow.

“Possibly. It seems you hold the key to our salvation.” The elf nodded again in her direction. 

“Good to know. Here I thought we’d be ass-deep in demons forever,” She could hear the shorter man roll his eyes, the sarcasm dripping from each word. He strode up to stand between her and the elf, and she noticed that he was only up to her elbow. Was he a... A dwarf, maybe? She turned to better face him, and he introduced himself. “Varric Tethras: Rogue, storyteller, and occasionally unwelcome tagalong.” He winked at Cassandra at this, and her scowl deepened. 

She looked between the elf, the dwarf Varric, and Cassandra, and started to sheath her knives in her belt again. “So, I closed the rift. What now?” She tried to keep her voice light, but the short cut of her dress showed her knees literally trembling with panic again.

“Now we go to meet Leilana.” Cassandra decided, and turned to leave. 

“What a great idea!” Varric started to follow, but Cassandra whipped around.

“Absolutely not. Your help is appreciated, Varric, but-”

“Have you been in the valley lately, Seeker?” Varric cut her off. “Your soldiers aren’t in control anymore. You need me.” 

They glared at each other for a moment, but finally Cassandra let out a disgusted sigh, turned again, and started off, Varric trailing slowly behind. She got the feeling that Varric was even more unwelcome than she was.

The elf had moved to be by her shoulder. “My name is Solas, if there are to be introductions. I am pleased to see you still live.” The elf gave the smallest of smiles, as thought it were not something he did very often.

“He means, ‘I kept that mark from killing you while you slept’.” Varric called over his shoulder. 

“Um, thank you.” She rubbed her arms again; the cold was setting in. “I can’t close the Breach if I’m dead.” 

“That is most certainly true.” Solas had a small glint in his eye; he felt humored, perhaps? But before she could introduce herself to the pair, Solas turned to Cassandra. “Cassandra, you should know: the magic involved here is unlike any I have seen. Your prisoner is no mage. Indeed, I find it difficult to imagine _any_ mage having such power.”

“Understood,” Cassandra responded in her guarded way. “We must get to the forward camp quickly.” She took off at a faster pace, and Solas dashed off to keep up. 

She stood there alone for a minute, still rubbing her arms. “My name is Catherine, thank you for asking.” She mumbled to herself, turning to catch up with the others.

The path to the forward camp led them again onto another section of the frozen river, but was largely deserted: they encountered a few demons and quickly slaughtered them, Catherine’s ankle feeling worse and worse during the walk. But there was no wildlife, no animals of any kind running around, which Catherine had thought would be normal in a forest such as this. Maybe she was too busy comparing it to the forests back home. Maybe there weren’t animals here? Just demons?

Varric had tried to start a conversation many times, but Cassandra’s disgusted sighs kept interrupting. As she was cleaning her blade after a demon attack, Varric crept closer to her.

“So, are you innocent?” He asked bluntly. For a storyteller, he certainly wasn’t subtle.

“I don’t remember what happened.” Catherine shrugged. She could feel Cassandra’s eyes on her. 

Varric chuckled. “That’ll get you every time. You should’ve spun a story.”

“That’s what you would’ve done.” Cassandra darkly spoke.

“It’s more believeable. And less prone to result in premature execution.” Varric heft his crossbow over his shoulder into its holster, and walked away with a smirk. Catherine could tell he enjoyed antagonizing Cassandra, but if he kept it up it might _actually_ result in her premature execution.

They ran now, Catherine falling behind with Varric as Cassandra went ahead to the gates of the forward camp. “Open the door!” She bellowed. 

“Of course, Lady Cassandra,” the guards opened them as the group ran up, and closed them swiftly behind them with no time lost.

“We’re clear for the moment. Well done.” Solas offered her the first piece of praise she had heard all day as they stopped together just inside the doors. 

“Whatever that thing on your hand, it’s useful.” Varric patted her arm. 

Cassandra was already walking ahead. A man in mint green ran up to her, and she gave orders back. Catherine was certain she heard something about shoes. Varric grabbed three of the tea drinks for the remainder of the group, and she stood there, shivering in the cold, sipping cold tea. All of the adrenaline from fighting was gone, for the moment; she had to get going and do the next part of her task, otherwise she would never get warm and never wake up from this dream. 

The trio crept closer as voices began to rise; Catherine recognized Leilana from before, trying to again calm Cassandra, who was shouting at another person Catherine didn’t recognize.

“Ah, here they come.” The man spat in disgust as Catherine, Varric, and Solas approached the group.

“You made it.” Leilana spoke with no inflection. “Chancellor Rodrick, this is-”

“I know who she is.” Rodrick’s disgust was evident on his face as he glared right at Catherine. “As Grand Chancellor of the Chantry, I hereby order you to take this criminal to Val Royeaux to face execution.”

Catherine’s face visibly drained. Cassandra had given little in the way of comfort, but she had promised a trial. After all the fighting she had done to get here - in heels, no less - she had expected at least that one thing to be upheld.

Cassandra, clearly, was displeased by the order as well. “Order me? You are a glorified clerk. A bureaucrat!”

“And you are a thug, but a thug who supposed serves the Chantry!” Rodrick fired back. Catherine gave a small shrug; she knew from experience that Cassandra was a thug, but Cassandra was fighting for her. It was not what she expected.

“We serve the Most Holy, Chancellor, as you well know.” Leilana spoke calmly, trying to reduce the shouting.

“Justinia is dead! We must elect a replacement, and obey _her_ orders on the matter!” Rodrick bellowed. 

“Please don’t talk about me like I’m not here.” Catherine don’t know where her courage came from, but it cropped up now as she blurted this out loudly. The group turned to look at her. 

“You shouldn’t even _be_ here!” Rodrick’s eyes brimmed with hatred for her. Catherine blanched, and took a step back. This man had put into words everything she had been feeling since waking up in that dungeon: no, she _shouldn’t_ be here. She didn’t know where “here” was. But she was here _now_ , and that’s what mattered.

Cassandra moved forward, to shield Catherine. “Enough.” Leilana crossed her arms in defiance.

Rodrick calmed to speak. “Call a retreat, Seeker. Our position here is hopeless.” 

“We can stop this before it’s too late.” Cassandra spoke boldly.

Catherine felt a tap on her shoulder, and turned. A woman in the mint green uniform stood behind her, trembling, holding out a pair of worn leather boots. “The... The Seeker, she said you needed shoes. These were the only ones we could find that would be small enough.”

“Thank you. This is very kind.” Catherine gave her as warm a smile as she could muster while still trying to overhear the conversation between Cassandra and Chancellor Rodrick. The woman dashed off, and Catherine took a few steps to the wall beside them to put on the boots.

There was nothing she could do for the twisted ankle at the moment except gingerly put weight on it. The boots were a bit too wide for her foot, but otherwise they were much better than the open-toed shoes she had been traipsing around in before. They clashed horribly with her dress and cardigan, but at this point she could’ve cared less. 

She walked back to rejoin the group when her hand spasmed again and she cried out in pain; this one didn’t hurt nearly as bad as any other, and Catherine assumed that was due to closing a rift. She glanced up and saw Rodrick glaring at her again. 

“How do you think we should proceed?” Cassandra asked her then. “Through the mountains, or charge with the soldiers?”

“You... Want my opinion?” Catherine’s voice was strained from the lingering pain.

“You must come with us to close the Breach. Your opinion is relevant.” Cassandra answered.

With a glance around the group, avoiding Rodrick’s angry gaze, she looked back to Cassandra. “We should charge with the troops. Safety in numbers.”

Without questioning it, Leilana nodded and walked off. Solas and Varric took out their weapons, and Cassandra gently reached for Catherine’s arm, guiding her past Rodrick to the far gate.

“On your head be the consequences, Seeker!” He bellowed as they walked away. Catherine glanced at Cassandra, who refused to allow a flicker of emotion to pass her face. 

The group passed silently through the far gate, and a sign at the Crossroads pointed them in the direction of the Temple of Sacred Ashes. A shudder crept down Catherine’s spine upon reading this sign: firstly, she had an eerie feeling about the name - even though it didn’t seem familiar - she knew she hadn’t been there before. And secondly, she was in a foreign land and _could read_. Was English what they considered the Common Tongue, as Cassandra had mentioned before? The realization that she could read here did not make her feel better; it only made her more worried as to whether this were some huge dream, or if this was a new reality for her. Up until now she had assumed she was in a dream... But what if this was real?

They met with about twenty troops just outside the forward camp, and with them set off for the Temple. Here there were more demons that she had seen before, and she found that her soldiers, her “safety in numbers”, were little more than raw recruits who must have been given their first swords today. Suddenly, the mountain pass seemed like a nicer option. But only for a moment.

Cassandra danced through the demons with her sword, hacking them to mist. Varric launched volley after volley of arrows, each one hitting dead between the eyes. Solas used his staff to paint glyphs on the ground that exploded with ice whenever a demon got too close. And she continued with her simple tactic of getting in close, getting in a few jabs with her daggers, and then ducking away. To her surprise, she was actually doing rather well, taking out just as many demons as the others, and leaving the recruits in awe. 

Somehow, Catherine ended up at the front of the group, and she walked them through the remains of a stone archway that must’ve been the entrance to the Temple of Sacred Ashes. The smell of burnt flesh and smoke filled the air, and she saw a few of those behind her, including Varric, cover their noses with their sleeves. Catherine looked down and saw twisted, charred bodies on the ground, their faces contorted in their last screams of pain. Catherine wanted to cry, knowing that these people had died in such a gruesome manner. She shuddered: Cassandra, Rodrick, Leilana... They thought she was responsible for this?

In front of them, Catherine expected to see the Breach. But it was another rift, similar to the one Solas had used her hand to close before, but much larger. The crystal cracked and shuddered, spinning gently in the air with green haze surrounding it. Overhead, the Breach loomed, casting everything and everyone in a bright green glow. 

“You’re here! Thank the Maker,” Catherine turned to see Leilana jogging up, a large bow slung over her shoulders and followed by a man in a great fur mantle and more troops behind them. 

“Leilana, you and Cullen have your men take up positions around the temple.” Cassandra ordered, and Leilana and the man Cullen nodded. Cassandra walked over to Catherine, who was visibly trembling in the glow of the rift and the Breach. “This is your chance to end this. Are you ready?” She asked.

Catherine swallowed. “I’m assuming you have a plan to get me up there?” She asked, sounding considerably braver than she felt. Glancing around her, she noticed that many of the new soldiers, Cullen included, seemed to be looking at her strangely. Either they wanted her dead, or they were confused by the combo of her sturdy boots and floral dress.

“No,” Solas answered. “This rift was the first, and it is the key. Seal it, and perhaps we seal the Breach.”

“Then let’s find a way down. And be careful.” Cassandra nodded to each of them in turn, and they followed the soldiers through the remains of the Temple. Catherine continued to look around, and only felt sadder and sadder by the destruction she saw. She realized, with a shudder, that this was where they had found her before they had put her in the dungeon. 

They split, with Solas and Catherine following Cullen and his men down a set of stairs while Varric and Cassandra followed Leilana a bit further around the Temple. She could here Varric speaking to Cassandra and she was brushing it off. “But what’s it _doing here_?” He asked, almost worried. Catherine could not here what he was talking about.

The group stopped short in front of her and Catherine, who had been trying to hear more of Varric’s worries, walked right into Cullen and his fur mantle and his heavy, painful armor. She would’ve collapsed to the ground had he not quickly turned and caught her, steadying her on her feet. Her ankle twisted with pain again, and she gasped.

“Are you alright?” He asked briskly, eyes moving down to her boots and the source of her pain. “Did you-”

“It’s fine, just a sprain.” Catherine stood up. Cullen spoke in an accent she recognized as similar to her own, which was a relief. Maybe she wasn’t that far from home? But she didn’t want pity, or to be weak, not when she’d come this far. “Thank you.” She nodded, and he nodded in return. They continued their descent into the Temple.

“Keep the sacrifice still.” A deep male voice rang out. Catherine looked around, searching for the source of the voice and almost walking into Cullen again. 

“Someone, help me!” A female voice echoed. Cullen seized upon hearing it, and urged that group faster down the stairs to the foot of the rift.

“That is Divine Justinia’s voice!” Catherine heard Cassandra shout from the far side of the pavilion. The groups joined together, with Cullen and Leilana dispatching their troops to various places on the stairs. 

The mark on Catherine’s hand flashed, this time with no pain. The female voice from before rang out again. “Someone, help me!” She realized these voices were coming from the rift itself. Then she heard something that made her blood chill.

“What’s going on here?” Another female voice rang out - her own.

Cassandra turned to her, confused and scared. “That was your voice. Most Holy called out to you. But...”

The rift seemed to know Cassandra’s thoughts. Through the green haze, shapes began to form. A demon of some kind had his clawed handed extended towards a woman tied up before him - the woman must be Divine Justinia, Catherine thought. Just as she had processed this, she saw herself, in her dress and heels, walk into the scene. 

“Run while you can! Warn them!” The Divine shouted.

“We have an intruder. Slay the girl.” The demon snarled, and the scene disappeared with a loud crack. 

Catherine could feel the eyes of them all on her. 

“You _were_ there? Who attacked? And the Divine, is she...? Was that vision true? What are we seeing?” Cassandra bellowed, getting into Catherine’s face.

“I don’t remember!” Catherine shouted back. “I don’t remember any of this!” 

Cassandra had to know she was speaking the truth. She had never seen that woman before in her life. And before today, she had never seen a demon before. She hadn’t been born with this green mark on her hand, and she didn’t blow things up as a hobby. She had agreed to help close the rift, agreed to do her part, but she was innocent of killing the Divine and everyone else!

“Echoes of what happened here. The Face bleeds into this place.” Solas mused, ignoring the fighting. “This rift is not sealed, but it is closed... Albeit temporarily. I believe that, with the mark, the rift can be opened, and then sealed properly and safely. However, opening the rift will likely attract attention from the other side.”

Solas seemed startled that anyone else was paying attention. “That means demons.” Cassandra turned away from Catherine and shouted to Cullen and Leilana’s men at their stations. “Stand ready!”

They all drew their weapons, except for Catherine. Her fear had crept back, and she simply stood there, staring at the swirling rift above her. Almost as though in a trance, she extended her left hand towards the sky. 

She felt that strange feeling again, her emotions ebbing and flowing until a loud crack rang out and the rift split open. A ball of green haze shot out of it and landed at her feet, swelling and growing. Catherine stepped back, withdrawing her daggers as she walked and watched the green ball grow until it was three times her size. With a hiss, a demon appeared through the green haze.

“A pride demon.” She heard Cullen mumble behind her.

The demon was tall and wide, with great big claws on his hands and sharp fangs that were as long as she was tall. Roughly the size of a house, it looked down on them and laughed 

“Now!” Cassandra bellowed, and a flurry of arrows flew overhead and hit the demon, bouncing harmlessly off its chest. This time, it roared.

“Charge!” Cullen shouted, and those with swords left forward. 

Catherine felt woefully unprepared for what was happening. Cassandra and Cullen each took a leg and starting hacking away, both side-stepping to avoid the swipes from its claws. Leilana and Varric fired arrow after arrow into its face, trying to blind at lease one of its many eyes. Solas stood the furthest back, sending snowballs, fireballs, lightning strikes, and anything his staff could fire. And Catherine, who had no training and had simply begun to use these daggers mere minutes ago, decided to charge the demon.

The demon must’ve sensed her mark, because she could see each of his eyes following her motion. With one hand he reached to grab her, but she rolled out of the way and came up on Cullen’s side. Spinning wildly, she hacked and sliced at the leg beside Cullen, then dodged and slid under the demon itself, avoiding the claws again. She stabbed clean through its foot near where Cassandra was fighting, and the demon howled. She heard a whizzing sound, immediately pulled the dagger out of its foot, and sprinted away towards Solas just in time: a blast of lightning rattled the ground a few steps away from where she had just been. 

“Use your mark on the rift!” Solas shouted to her. She nodded, taking off again towards the demon. He anticipated her making the same swerve towards Cullen, and so she feinted, then ran straight through his legs to come out behind him. With a quick roll, she reached her hand into the sky again, this time ready for the emotional swirl. She forced out only her negative emotions, her despair and confusion, leaving her confidence and her happiness, and the rift crackled, dissipating into haze. The demon dropped to its knees, and Cullen and Cassandra pounced, hacking at the demon’s head and chest.

Catherine took a moment to drink one of the tea concoctions Cassandra had tied to her belt, and immediately felt more energy. The demon stood up again, and Catherine dashed to meet Cullen and Cassandra, who were regrouping with Leilana, Varric, and Solas.

The demon laughed his smug laugh and clapped his hands together. Pulling them apart, he revealed a long whip, a handle with two thin lashes snaking to the ground ending in large barbs. He flicked the whip, letting it crack over their heads. That’s when Catherine charged, Cullen and Cassandra close behind. 

She dashed to the demon’s leg, used her momentum to jump up onto its knee, and up its body, slashing and hacking at its underbelly, where she suspected its hide was thinnest. She was right as the monster howled again in pain. She dashed through its legs, coming up on its left by Cassandra just as it flicked its whip at them.

Cassandra deflected the whip with her shield, but Catherine wasn’t so lucky: she felt the sting on her right side, and immediately sunk to a knee. The demon laughed, and Cullen, side-stepping closer, pierced through the demon’s hide with his greatsword. The laugh died in the demon’s throat.

As soon as Cullen withdrew his sword, Varric and Leilana aimed for the wound, causing him to topple over. Solas froze the whip in its hand, while Cassandra charged, she and Cullen piercing its hide again and again. It collapsed on its side, panting.

Catherine stood up, leaving one dagger on the ground to use her hand to clutch her side, and stumbled over to the demon’s head. With one motion, she slit its throat and watched as it evaporated into green mist, sucked back into the rift. Shuffling past Cullen and Cassandra, she jabbed her remaining dagger into the ground, still clutching her side, and reached up with her left hand towards the rift. Channeling her pain through her hand, the rift sealed with a loud crack. A green ball shot out of it, headed towards the Breach. The sky flashed, and green haze lingered like fog.

“The rift has been sealed.” Solas announced solemnly as the group gathered around Catherine. She stood there, looking up into the sky. The Breach swirled above her, but she had done all she could. 

Catherine turned to face the group, clutching her side. She grinned at those surrounding her, although only Varric grinned back. With a soft whimper, her knees buckled and she passed out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This, along with the first chapter, was originally one big chapter. I didn't want to break the internet with it, though, and so divided it in two. There's some minor divergence here, with Cullen and Leilana helping with the fight, but let's not forget the major divergence of Catherine not actually being from Thedas!
> 
> Hopefully, in the next chapter I can begin to stray away from the in-game dialogue to develop these characters into the ones I want them to be. And maybe, since I'm already in deep on the canon divergence, I can really have someone just punch Rodrick in the face? Decisions, decisions...


	4. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING/SPOILER: This chapter contains someone getting stitches, and it's not a pretty picture. If you don't feel comfortable with it, skip the last 1/4 of it. Sorry, bro.

What a strange dream, Catherine thought to herself as she began to wake. 

She could feel her body becoming more alert. She was a little chilly, but the bed was comfortable and she didn’t want to move. It was a pleasant chill, and maybe, just maybe, she would have a pleasant day. Given the most recent phone calls with her mother, she highly doubted it, but it was the first time she awoke with any sort of optimism in quite a while.

Catherine could hear someone moving around, and assumed it was actually coming from her roommate’s room. Her roommate worked strange hours, and sometimes Catherine didn’t see her for days on end. The room remained dark, and so she figured she could sleep in a little while longer. She started to turn over on her right side, and cried out in pain.

She heard something drop and footsteps running off. She opened her eyes partway and saw her body contorted on the bed. She was wearing strange clothes, ones she had never seen before in her life. The bedspread was different... And the walls...

Looking around, she realized that it wasn’t a dream. She wasn’t in her own bed - she was in some strange place, the same place where she had the- The mark. She lifted her left hand to her face, and saw the green flicker gently like a candle. This wasn’t a dream. 

Catherine had been willing to believe the weird things that had happened to her, that she had fought demons alongside an elf and a dwarf and closed a rift in the sky, because she had assumed this was all a dream. _Don’t question dream logic_ , her father had told her once after a strange dream, _because it can tell us our secret desires_. 

Memories came flooding back to her. Not anything significant, not anything immediately before waking up in a dungeon, but what had happened before she had passed out this last time. She remembered Cassandra, and the demons, and did she really slice off a demon’s head with a dagger? 

Her contorted body couldn’t handle the long thinking process her brain was going through, and she cried out in pain again. She decided to try and sit up, her back resting delicately against the headboard. The pain had decreased dramatically. But she didn’t remember why she was in so much pain.

Looking down at her hands, she could see numerous cuts and bruises from landing in the rubble of the Temple of Sacred Ashes. She couldn’t see her legs, due to the strange cloth pants she had been dressed in, but she was sure they looked just as bad. She had on a cloth top as well, very loose around her, with ornamental fasteners down the front. Gingerly, she lifted the shirt on her right side, and gasped.

There was some kind of bandage running down her body, from just under her right breast to - she pushed down the hem of her pants to check - just past her hip joint. The bandage looked rough, like it needed to be changed, and the area around it was red and inflamed - what if it was infected? She began pulling back at the corners of the bandage when the door opened and two people walked in.

The man who walked over to her bed had a stern look on his face. He was tall, with closely-trimmed hair and a strange blue robe. “What are you doing?” His voice was calm and deep. He sat down beside her and started reapply the bandage. No introductions. No inquiring after her feelings. He had horrible bedside manner, to be sure.

“I’m checking to see if the wound is infected.” She mumbled to him, leaning back against the headboard to let him check.

“In... fected? It seems to be just fine, but you will have a scar.” The man pulled open a drawer on the nightstand and withdrew another roll of bandages. 

“Yes, but what about the redness and the swelling? Did you clean the wound? What sort of antiseptic did you use? And how was it stitched?” 

The man just stared. Catherine couldn’t read his face; she didn’t know if he was amused or irritated. The only thing he said was, with the slight turning of his head to the woman by the door, “Tell the Seeker the Herald is awake.”

“That doesn’t answer my question, and I’m not a Herald.” Catherine responded, pushing herself away from the man.

“You need to rest. You’ve been badly injured.” The man sighed in exasperation.

“Yes, and if I let you care for me, I’ll be badly dead.” Catherine swung her feet off the bed, nearly hitting him. He stood and, raising his hands in resignation, left the small room.

Catherine was grateful he was gone, because the room had started to spin. The man was right, she did need to rest and heal, but she needed to be sure the wound was tended to properly. This was what she was trained to do, and she would not rest until she could see a real doctor, someone who would explain to her liking exactly what was going on. 

Slowly and carefully, she put weight on her legs and managed to stand. Somehow, she felt fine. Not in the best shape, but able to move around much more than she had anticipated. So, yes, the pleasant day she had momentarily dreamed of wasn’t exactly going the right way, but she wasn’t dead, so... Plus?

She noticed a pair of boots by the door, and as she approached she realized they were the same ones that had been given to her at the forward camp. Moving as slowly as possible, she pulled them on. The right side gave her a bit of trouble, especially where the bandage was. She paused a moment to take a deep breath, and she could feel her anxiety growing about what could be outside the door. More demons? The executioner, waiting to take her away?

Catherine pulled opened the door, and took a few steps outside. The sun was shining bright, but she could still see the giant hole in the sky. So, she had not managed to close the Breach after all. Birds flew overhead, carefully skirting the Breach in the sky. She turned her gaze to the path in front of her, and gasped.

The other woman who had been in the room with her, the one the man had told to alert Cassandra, had obviously also alerted the entire town that she was now awake. They stood in straight lines parallel to the path and, upon seeing her come out of the cottage, stood in formation with their right first covering their heart in a salute.

She was completely baffled. She had never had this many people pay attention to her before in her life. She could hear them saying “That’s her! That’s the Herald!” but she ignored it as best she could. Normally, she preferred to isolate herself from others, but all thoughts of that had been dashed since she woke up in that dungeon. These people hated her not that long ago and wanted her dead. Now they were saluting her as she walked through the small village, headed for the largest building, the one she recognized as her previous dungeon. 

Taking care to walk slow, her breathing was labored. Walking and breathing were two things she had grown accustomed to being able to do at the same time, but the wound on her side was slowing her down She pressed her right hand to her side, and the added pressure to the worn bandage helped immensely. That doctor probably hadn’t even given her stitches! Idiot!

When she approached the doors to the large building, two of the men in mint green took pity on her and pushed the doors open for her. She stepped inside and remembered this room from her last trip through. It was lit with candles everywhere on every surface, but there was no one inside to salute or bow or even acknowledge her, for which she was grateful. The doors closed behind her as she took a few steps inside, and she could hear voices - loud voices - coming from behind a door on the opposite side of the room. 

At the door, she recognized Cassandra’s voice and was hesitant to go inside. Cassandra had stood up for her when Roderick had wanted her executed, but it didn’t inspire much confidence to simply and bluntly say there would be a trial to determine her guilt. With another deep breath, she pushed open the door and walked in.

“Chain her! I want her prepared for travel to the capital for trial!” Roderick exclaimed, pointing at her with a large grimace on his face. Catherine saw Cassandra and Leilana standing behind a central table, and she could’ve sworn she saw the two women exchange glances and roll their eyes in exasperation. When no one moved to follow his command, he turned and walked back to Cassandra. “You walk a dangerous line, Seeker.”

“The Breach is stable, but it is still a threat. I will not ignore it.” Cassandra turned to face him directly. 

“I- I did what I could.” Catherine sputtered, feeling guilty. But she had done all she could! Her injuries were proof enough of that.

“You have done plenty.” Roderick snarled. “Your actions will be taken into account by the new Divine.”

“Who?” She asked, but Roderick only glared. 

Cassandra spoke through gritted teeth. “Have a care, Chancellor. The Breach is not the only threat we face.”

“Someone was behind the explosion at the Conclave. Someone Most Holy did not expect.” Leilana spoke barely above a whisper, and yet her words carried. “Perhaps they died with the others - or have allies who yet live.” 

Roderick was indignant. “ _I_ am a suspect?!” He exclaimed.

“You.” Leilana nodded. “And many others.” 

“But _not_ the prisoner.” Roderick’s face turned to a scowl as he again faced Catherine, who refused to wilt before him.

“I heard the voices in the Temple. The Divine called to her for help.” Cassandra responded. 

“So her survival, that... That thing on her hand - all a coincidence?” Roderick threw his hands into the air with sarcasm. 

Cassandra stood her ground. “Providence. The Maker sent her to us in our darkest hour.”

“ _Who?_ ” Catherine asked again, but was ignored by all. Cassandra turned and walked to the rear of the room, and Leilana stepped forward to take her place.

“The Breach remains, and her mark is still our only hope of closing it.” 

Roderick was tired of being ignored and insulted. “This is not for you to decide.” He crossed his arms in defiance. 

Cassandra strolled back to them, standing between them and slamming a large tome on the table. Catherine jumped a bit at the sudden movement. The book was very old and had a thick leather cover with a large ornamental sun on it. 

“You know what this is, Chancellor?” Cassandra asked with a hint of a smirk on her face. “A writ from the Divine, granting us the authority to act. As of this moment, I declare the Inquisition reborn. We will close the Breach, we will find those responsible, and we will restore order. With or without your approval.” Cassandra challenged him, taking steps towards him and watching him retreat like a skittish mouse. Catherine smiled as Roderick looked at them all and stalked off. 

“We aren’t ready.” Leilana bowed her head to hide her smile. “We have no leader, no numbers, and now no Chantry support.”

“But we have no choice: we must act now.” Cassandra turned to look at Catherine, and she could see a small smile on the Seeker’s lips. “With you at our side.”

Catherine blanched. No one had ever wanted her help. She was constantly left out, or ignored; no one actively sought her for their team. She had grown accustomed to being invisible, and she was quite good at it. But she remembered how she felt fighting the pride demon with the group, holding her own with others who considered her an equal, and how _good_ she had felt. How needed.

“I want to help.” Catherine nodded to Cassandra and Leilana.

“That is all we ask.” Leilana gave her a small smile as well. 

Cassandra held out her hand to shake. “Help us fix this before it’s too late.” Catherine stared at the hand, wondering how this could possibly backfire on her. Death, obviously, but that seemed to be postponed; now that Roderick was gone, no one seemed to want her immediately executed. And from the sounds of this Inquisition business, they needed all the help they could get. Not to mention, there was nothing else she could do in this strange world with a glowing green mark on her left hand. Catherine shook Cassandra’s hand. 

There was a knock at the door, and Leilana moved to unlock it. Catherine took a step back to see two people enter with the door swiftly closed behind them. One of them was Cullen, one of the men who had helped fight the pride demon at the Rift, and the other was a small woman with tanned skin and jet-black hair in an elaborate pile on her head. They both nodded at her before circling the table to stand near Leilana.

“May I present Commander Cullen, leader of the Inquisition’s Forces.” Cassandra gestured to him, and he nodded in acknowledgment, Catherine doing the same. Away from the panic of the rift, she could see that Cullen was a few years older than she with blonde hair and a serious expression. He was also very handsome, but he did not seem to know it.

“Such as they are,” he mumbled. “We lost many soldiers in the valley, and I fear many more before this is through.” 

“And this is Lady Josephine Montilyet, our ambassador and chief diplomat.” Cassandra finished the introductions as Josephine gave a small curtsy. Catherine nodded to her as well. This woman clearly knew she was attractive.

“Hello, Herald. I’m afraid there are a few details I need from you to begin this process.” This woman had a thicker accent, but it sounded almost... Elegant? That was a perfect word to describe this woman. Her mother would’ve adored her. Josephine dipped her brush in ink and waited to write. “What is your name and title, Herald?”

“Um,” Catherine stammered. “Why are you calling me Herald?”

Josephine smiled. “That is the only name I have for you at the moment.”

“Ah. Um, my name is, um, Catherine.” She mumbled into the ground.

“Do you have a title? Where are you from, exactly?” Josephine pressed gently.

Catherine glanced around the room quickly, avoiding making eye contact, and sighed. “My name is Lady Catherine Trevelyan, daughter of Lord Trevelyan of-”

“Ostwick?” Josephine quipped, her eyes aglow with curiosity. “In the Free Marches?”

“Um, no, Bryher.” Catherine corrected. “Isles of Scilly.”

“I... I’ve never heard of such a place.” Josephine admitted tactfully. 

“Not many have,” Catherine shrugged.

“But you are a lady! Of noble birth, yes?”

Catherine sighed again. “Yes. I am eighty-sixth in line for the throne.”

Josephine’s eyes glitters, but she asked no further questions, instead scribbling furiously on her notepad. Catherine looked around, and saw Cassandra and Leilana were whispering to each other. Cullen, in front of her, was spreading out a large map on the table, taking care to pin down the corners and make sure it lay absolutely flat. 

“Why am I being called Herald?” Catherine asked him, and he looked at her. His pale brown eyes were full of sympathy for her. 

“It is...” Cullen stood up straight and rested his hands on the pommel of his sword. 

“The Chantry has denounced the Inquisition - and you, specifically.” Josephine looked up from her clipboard. 

“Me?” Catherine asked, concern growing. “What is a- a Chantry?”

Josephine’s eyes narrowed at the question, but she continued. “Some are calling you the Herald of Andraste. The remaining clerics have declared it blasphemy, and we heretics for harboring you.”

“But who-” Catherine was growing impatient at her questions being ignored. “Who is Andraste?”

Cassandra and Leilana exchanged glances. “I was worried about this,” Cassandra murmured, but she turned to face Catherine all the same. “Solas mentioned the Breach might have been... A bit too powerful. It pulled you from beyond the Fade.”

“ _Beyond_ the Fade?” Cullen paled. “Is there such a thing?”

“Evidently, as the Herald stands here before us as proof.” Leilana gestured to her.

Catherine shook her head. “I... I don’t know anything about this Fade business. But I do know that almost nothing you’ve spoken of is familiar to me at all. I... I must be from somewhere else.”

“You are taking this rather... Calmly.” Josephine observed, pen posed to paper to prepare.

“Oh, no, I’m not.” Catherine managed a weak smile. “I just have a very good poker face.”

“Poker?” Josephine asked, confused.

“Never mind.” Catherine looked around, her vision starting to blur. She had been standing too long, and have overexerted herself. There was a chair nearby, but if only she could...

Cullen dashed around the table to pull a chair behind her before she could even head for the one she had seen. “Apologies, Herald. I should’ve noticed you were weak on your feet.”

“I need to treat the wound properly,” Catherine said, and she could feel her face heating up. “The doctor did a poor job of it.”

Cullen exchanged looks with Josephine, who mouthed to him, _Doctor?_ with a confused expression.

“What do you need?” Cassandra asked, her expression unreadable.

“To return to my bed.” Catherine started to rise, and Cullen held her gently to steady her. She got the impression that he would’ve carried her if she had asked, but she couldn’t be weak like that. He steered her towards the door, and she continued speaking. “I’ll need a needle, thread, and an antiseptic.”

“Antiseptic?” Leilana asked as Josephine darted off into a smaller room and Cassandra rushed forward to open the main building door. 

Catherine groaned. Was she going to have to do this with everything - keep listing options of things to try and relate to something in this world? Because it would be tiresome very, very quickly. “Disinfectant? Alcohol?”

That, she knew. “Alcohol? Yes, we have that.”

“Clear alcohol, any strength will do. Ah!” Catherine stumbled down the front steps, and Cullen wordlessly tucked his arm behind her knees and carried her. 

Thankfully, the townspeople had dispersed, so very few people saw the leaders of the Inquisition carrying a half-conscious Herald through Haven. Cassandra opened the door for them and Cullen walked in first, gently laying Catherine on her bed and stepping back to remove her boots. Josephine walked in with a large needle in one hand and a ball of thin thread in the other. Finally, Leilana walked in with Varric and closed the door behind them; Varric was carrying a large bottle of clear liquid, which Catherine took to be the alcohol.

“What do you want us to do, Lady Herald?” Josephine asked, placing the needle and thread on the table by the bed.

“I have to check this wound, to see how it’s been treated. It’s likely I’ll need stitches.” Catherine raised her head and shoulders off the bed, and Cassandra swiftly moved to help prop her up on pillows. 

Cullen gave a weak cough. “Are we to understand correctly that you intend to... Sew yourself closed?”

“Wounds of this size and caliber need be closed, to prevent scarring and infection.” Catherine lifted her shirt again to expose the bandage; out of the corner of her eye, she saw Cullen look away to stare at the far wall. “It is dangerous to leave them exposed and open.”

She gritted her teeth, counted to three in her head, and ripped off the bandage. There was a collective flinch in the room, and Catherine looked down to see the extent of the wound. She had not pierced any vital organs, which was good, but the wound was still long and deep; stitches would definitely be required. 

“I can’t watch this,” Josephine covered her mouth and ran out of the room, Leilana following behind to care for her. 

“Varric? The alcohol - pour some on my hands, please.” Catherine asked. Varric numbly stepped forward, uncorked the bottle, and poured a splash of the liquid in her palms. She rubbed her hands together, cleaning them, and reached for the needle and thread. “Cassandra... Can you...?”

Silently nodding, Cassandra threaded the needle and tied a neat knot at the end. She alone seemed to realize exactly what this procedure would entail.

While waiting, Catherine took the bottle from Varric’s hands and took a swig of it for herself. She wasn’t a big drinker, and the liquid burned her throat, but her hands stopped shaking and her breath evened out. Cassandra handed back the needle and Catherine held it, poised, over the bottom of the wound near her pelvic bone. “You don’t have to watch this. It won’t be particularly enjoyable.”

“We care for your safety, Herald.” Cullen mumbled, but she could see that his face was pale and he wasn’t a fan of what was about to happen.

Gritting her teeth, Catherine started. Slowly, just like she had learned in her lessons. The simple interrupted stitch would do just fine. Partway through, she took the bottle of alcohol from Cullen; Varric had disappeared right after he had seen the needle start to stitch her skin together. Cassandra stood by the door with her arms crossed, watching from afar. Cullen rested his arms over her legs so that they didn’t move when she flinched, for which she was grateful, but still resolutely looked away from her. There was a lot of flinching, and pain was high. Her mark decided to throb as she neared the part of her wound under her breast, and she had to stop to let that pain subside.

She finished and carefully looped the thread to tie a knot. “Dagger,” She croaked, holding out a hand. Cullen turned to look at her, his head cocked slightly. “Dagger.” She repeated, reaching for him. He pulled a small dagger off his belt and placed it hilt-first into her palm. In one motion, she cut the thread from the dagger, and dropped her arms, limp, on the bed beside her. She felt weak, like she might pass out again, but tried as hard as she could to stay conscious.

Cullen, rifling through drawers, pulled out the roll of bandages the man had left there earlier, and began applying it on top of the stitches. He wore large leather gloves that were cool to the touch, and she only winced slightly as he helped her move so he could wrap the bandage tightly around her ribcage. Even without the bandage, the stitches made her feel a lot better.

“We will send Adan in to check on this later tonight.” Cassandra said from the door, breaking the silence. “You should rest.”

Catherine looked at Cassandra, and then to Cullen, who was standing over her with a concerned expression, and then promptly passed out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still a bit of in-game dialogue, but only the stuff I particularly liked. I have it in my brain that Catherine is studying to be a doctor. I myself am not a doctor, but have a passing interest. And sorry this took, like, ten years to post: I wrote it, scrapped most of it, and wrote it again. Damn me and my brain.
> 
> If you're reading this for the Cullen/Inquizzie feels, well, then you are about twenty chapters too early, my friend. It's not going to be a slow burn, a will they / won't they thing, but there's a lot of shit that goes down before they get together, and that stuff's all good too.
> 
> Thanks again for reading and commenting and kudos-ing!


	5. Chapter 4

Catherine refused to leave the cabin for three days. Not that she really had the strength to leave, because her wounds still left her mostly bedridden. But now she was truly realizing the strength of Cassandra’s words that day she had formed the Inquisition - Catherine had been pulled from beyond the Fade. She was in a completely different world, a different universe. In her time of healing, she had a lot of time to think about everything that had happened to her in the past few days.

She didn’t know what this Fade business was. Quite frankly, there were some moments when she still believed this was all an elaborate dream and that she would wake up in her own bed, sans wounds, to a phone call from her mother stating yet again that she was a terrible daughter. But that never happened - she never woke up and found herself anywhere but in this small cabin with a large gash down the side of her body. She had never been in so much pain in her life.

Beyond the Fade must be where her own... world? dimension? universe? would be. And for the first two days, Catherine was adamant that she wanted to return. She wanted to go back to her own flat, with her own things, and her own life. She didn’t want to be the Herald of a god she’d never heard of - she wanted to blend in and skate invisibly through the world as she had done for the past twenty-six years. She was good at it. She wanted something familiar, something that she recognized unequivocally as her own. 

But the third day in her cabin, the first day she was able to get out of bed by herself and sit herself at the small table in her room, was the day that changed her mind. Someone, Catherine wasn’t sure who, had left her a stack of books on this table and, being bored sitting alone in bed, she had gotten up to see what they were about. One was about the history of Ferelden, which must be the country they were in. One was called Tale of the Champion, whatever that means, but Catherine noticed Varric’s name on the side. And one looked to be an elaborate description of the Chantry. Apparently, the Chantry was the church. Now that made more sense to her.

Someone was coming in to the room when she wasn’t awake, to stoke the fire and leave food and these books for her. The food was hearty and filling, but she couldn’t eat much - she learned that the hard way the first morning when she’d eaten everything on her plate far too quickly and retched in a bucket. The bucket had been placed close to her bed, so whoever had brought her the food had also suspected the retching.

Her wounds were also being tended. The man who had first treated her that day, the healer who had treated her like a petulant child, returned to poke and prod her. He had apparently taken personal offense that she had chosen to stitch her own wound, and so refused to give her anything for the considerable pain she was in. But she wouldn’t let him have the satisfaction of seeing her in pain, so she would constantly smile and laugh when the healer was around.

She did have a few visitors while she was in her self-imposed exile. Varric stopped the first afternoon, spending a few hours before dinner trying to make her laugh. He had probably left his own book for her himself; the man had a big ego, for sure. Solas the elf stopped by too that afternoon, and every evening before sunset to give her a dose of healing magic to soothe the aches and pains the supposed “healer” had left behind. 

None of the main Inquisition advisers came to see her, Catherine noticed that third morning as she sat in bed reading about the history of the Chantry. As the dullest book, she figured it would be easiest to get through it first. She could only remember Cassandra’s face, but the names swirled in her head: Leilana... Josephine... Cullen. Why would they go through all of the trouble of saving her, of healing her, and then not inquire as to how she is doing? Catherine just shrugged and continued reading.

The book of the Chantry contained information about this Andraste person, from whom Catherine was a so-called Herald. Andraste’s story was Catherine’s in reverse: she was a ordinary person who was called to the Maker’s side (not God’s side, Catherine noticed, and liked the new title better) to be his bride (a much more romantic story than sending God’s son to die for everyone’s sins). The story resonated with her so much that she continued reading through the whole book without stopping to sleep during the day. 

The first two days she had tried to sleep as much as possible, hoping that she would wake up back in her own bed, but now she was... Distracted wasn’t the word, but perhaps she was more invested in this dream world of hers. For a dream world, it was surprisingly concrete and solid, with a lot of history and politics involved. If it were a dream, it was terribly complicated. And not at all like the recent dreams she had been having; there hadn’t been any demons in those dreams. None that she could see, anyway.

Staying awake to read meant that she was awake when the door quietly pushed open and a hulking figure came in. Catherine closed the book and held it to her chest, her heart pounding, as the figure turned and shut the door. Once the light adjusted, Catherine could see the figure clearly: it was the blond commander, Cullen, bearing food on a tray.

“Good morning,” she squeaked out, her heart still hammering, and Cullen gave a small start, tipping the tray a bit. 

“You’re awake.” Cullen bowed his head to her, and slid the tray onto the round dining table. “You ... You haven’t been.”

“I feel much better today, thank you.” Catherine put the book down and carefully began to get out of bed, first by putting her legs down on the floor.

“Herald, wait!” Cullen abandoned the food to rush to her side. “Are you sure you’re alright? The- The stitches, the wound-”

“I’m alright.” Catherine smiled. She had gotten out of bed before, but that morning when she had found the books had been the best morning so far. The stitches could be removed, since the wound was nearly healed thanks to Solas’s healing magic. “Solas has visited a few times to help speed up the healing process. I feel quite a bit better.”

“Forgive me,” Cullen dropped his arms to the sides and stood, calmly watching her stand. “I had never seen someone treat their own wounds the way you did, and I- I didn’t know how long it would take to recover. You have amazing strength, Herald.” 

“Thank you.” Catherine smiled, running a hand through her hair. She couldn’t help but notice the Commander had a very attractive face, which made her want to drop into unconsciousness. She had never thought she was a particularly pretty girl, but compared to the rugged face of the Commander she felt like a goblin from the depths of Hell, especially in her sick clothes. Was he the one who had cleaned her vomit? “You may call me Catherine, if that’s alright.”

The Commander nodded, and held out the chair for her to sit at the table. When she was seated, he walked to the bed and grabbed the book she had been reading and placed it beside her.

“I didn’t think you would want to read this,” he gave her a light smile as he sat down opposite her, eating nothing. “Cassandra will be pleased, as she selected it.” 

“It’s...It’s not fascinating, but it is highly informative. Like Cassandra, I suppose.” Catherine concluded, and Cullen laughed softly.

“You are quite right. She will want to know that you are awake and able to get out of bed.”

Catherine hung her head, hiding her face in her long hair. “Yes, the trial.”

“Trial?” Cullen asked, confused.

“She said there was to be a trial. For my.. My...” She couldn’t say of what she was being accused: it sounded too evil, too wrong. She still had no memory of the past few days, and had only been here a short time, but she couldn’t imagine walking into the Temple and...

“I have heard nothing of a trial, Catherine,” Cullen admitted. “We have discussed your role in the creation of the Breach, but also in its closing. I- we do not believe you responsible for the explosion at the Temple of Sacred Ashes.”

Catherine’s heart soared to hear this news. She was innocent! She knew she was! Now they all finally believed it!

“Thank you. That does make me feel a lot better.” Catherine smiled at him. “Especially since it is what I had been saying the entire time.”

Cullen gave a small laugh as he rose from the table. “I should go and tell the others you are awake. We have all been taking turns bringing in your meals and things, and Josephine will be quite jealous that I was able to speak to you first.”

This time Catherine laughed. “I am sorry I did not wake up sooner. Or later.”

“One of us will fetch you this evening. We are to have a meeting that will greatly concern you, and it’s only proper that you be there.”

“Thank you, Commander.” Catherine bowed her head to him. “I appreciate all you have done for me.”

“You may call me Cullen, if that’s alright.” He responded, giving her a smile and opening the door to leave. “Until this evening, Catherine.” 

 

Solas came by a little after the meal and offered to help Catherine remove her stitches. She was almost giddy with the news that there wouldn’t be a trial, that they thought she was innocent, that they believed her. Once the stitches were out, Solas cast a bit more healing magic on her; if she hadn’t seen how bad the wound was before, she would’ve thought she had never been hurt - that’s how good she felt.

Someone had brought her clothes, and they were neatly folded on the windowsill. After Solas left, she got dressed. The pants seemed to be made of some kind of soft dark brown leather, while the shirt was an airy tan tunic like the one she had been sleeping in for the past few days. Her boots were by the door. Without a mirror, she ran her fingers through her hair and pulled it all over her left shoulder. Deeming herself presentably enough for a possible dream world, she pulled open her door and looked out.

This time, the residents of the village weren’t gathered out here to gawk at her. They were all going about their own business, oblivious of the new person on the path. Catherine saw several soldiers marching through, and looked for Commander Cullen behind them. He was not in the village, but she could see a flash of his red and gold uniform just outside the main gate. The village was loud, with people selling wares and talking with others about recent events. The Breach still hovered in the sky.

“All right, Herald?” A voice called out to her as she climbed a few steps, and she saw Varric standing at the top, a mug in his hands and a grin on his face. “Chuckles said you were awake. I didn’t think you’d be this coherent yet.”

“A miracle of modern medicine.” Catherine smiled, walking to stand beside him. “How are you?”

“As well as you’d expect. There’s a hole in the sky, a war on, and everyone wants me dead. Some more specifically than others.” He rolled his eyes, and she laughed. A few days ago, that laugh would’ve caused immense pain.

“I share your sentiments exactly.” Catherine grinned. “Are you attending the meeting this evening?”

“Naw, I’m not important enough for that. I just show up when invited and shoot the shit out of things. Meeting and planning’s not really my style.” Varric polished off the remainder of his mug and set it down near the fire. “Let me bring you up to them. Cassandra’ll shit herself that I got to you first.”

Catherine laughed again. “I’m sorry to disappoint, but the Commander found me awake first.”

“Of course Curly did. He’s nothing if not vigilant.” Varric waved an arm and she followed. 

“What is the name of this village?” Catherine asked, as one of the soldiers stopped to give her one of those stand fist-over-heart salutes. “Where are we?”

“This is Haven, in the middle of nowhere Fereldan.” Varric shuddered. “I’m a city dwarf myself. All this fresh air will be the death of me.”

“So you are a dwarf then.” Catherine said more to herself than to Varric, but he laughed.

“Yes, yes, I’m a dwarf. Do they not have dwarves where you’re from?”

“Not at all.” Catherine answered. “No dwarves, no elves, just humans.”

“What a boring and shitty place it must be. Chantry’s up here.” Varric winked.

Varric lead her to the big building in town, the one she now knew from her book was the Chantry, a place of prayer and worship. Sure enough, when the doors opened and she went inside she could see people lined up along the walls, lit by candlelight, kneeling in prayer. She walked quickly so as to not interrupt them.

Josephine was in a small office just near the door to the War Room, and Varric and Catherine listened as she tactfully argued with another elaborately dressed person. They didn’t get involved; instead, they just stood there and waited for Josephine to notice they were there. Catherine couldn’t help but think again how much her mother would’ve liked Josephine: the woman was able to skillfully reduce the other person’s anger with simple words, and look stunning while doing so. Catherine had always tried to be eloquent with her words, and she had some understanding of how it worked, but she was never quite good at it, preferring to be blunt and honest about her thoughts and feelings. Her mother had called her as gracefully as a cow.

Eventually Josephine noticed that Varric and Catherine were standing there, and nodded her head in acknowledgment. Varric pushed open the door to the War Room and they went in to wait, Catherine taking a seat to put herself eye level with Varric.

“Now that everyone’s out of earshot, how are you holding up?” Varric turned to her, a serious look on his face. “I can’t imagine what you’re going through is easy.”

“It still feels like a dream,” Catherine confessed. She found it easy to talk to Varric. The swearing made him feel... Real. “Like I’m going to wake up in my own bed and none of this will have ever happened.”

“Do you want that?”

”I don’t know,” Catherine admitted, the question sparking something in her that she didn’t quite understand. “Back home, I... I wasn’t very happy. But it was at least familiar.” Catherine had never been accused of detonating a sacred temple, but she also hadn’t sliced a demon’s head off with a dagger.

“Well, most people spread this stuff out over more than one day,” Varric clapped a hand to her shoulder. “Don’t let them push you around too much. In troubled times like this, it’s important to have a good sense of self.”

“Are you speaking from experience?” Catherine gave him a small smile.

“Well, I’ve never shot demons from a hole in the sky, no.” Varric grinned back. “But I’ve been through some shit. It helps if you have someone you love. You seem to.” He used his free hand to point to her left hand. 

Catherine was about to respond that she did not have a boyfriend or a husband, when she followed his pointing and saw a large engagement ring on her left hand. When had she gotten that? That was new. How hadn’t she noticed it before now? She certainly had never been in a relationship like that before, unless her mother had...

The thought hurt her mind and she winced.

“That good of love?” Varric asked seriously.

“I don’t remember what happened before I came here,” Catherine put her head in her hands. “But I certainly was not engaged to be married.”

“The big rock on your hand suggests otherwise,” Varric poked her, and she looked up to see him grinning. “So, you are arranged to be married. That’s shit. I’m sorry to have brought it up.”

“Me too.” She nodded, and pulled the ring off her hand. She slipped it in the pocket of her pants, and looked up at him. “Let’s not tell anyone about that.”

“Our little secret, Herald.” Varric winked. “Anyway, I should get going. The tavern’s not going to drink beer alone. If you’re feeling up to it, come down after. I know after I talk with Cassandra, I need a drink.”

Catherine laughed, but didn’t confirm. Varric opened the door and left Catherine alone in the War Room. She stood, and walked over to the table with Cullen’s map still spread out on it. 

She saw a castle marker on the south of the country marked Fereldan and, remembering what Varric had said, assumed that the castle was Haven. The map was gorgeous, beautifully drawn and colored, and Catherine leaned her hands on the table to be able to see every curve, every mountain range, every river. The fact was not lost on her that this was a map she had never seen of a world she was not from, and she felt excited about it. She wasn’t at home, with her mother arranging her to be married as evidenced by the ring that had been on her finger. In this world, maybe she didn’t have to be what her mother had wanted her to be. Maybe she could just be herself, or a better version of herself. Maybe she could see all of these places.

“It is a beautiful map, no?” Josephine’s voice rang out behind her, and Catherine turned to see Josephine, Cullen, and Cassandra in the doorway behind her, watching her look at the map. “Let me show you Antiva, where I am from.”

”Have you been to all of these places?” Catherine asked them all as Josephine stepped up beside her. She could feel Cullen standing on her other side, and Cassandra was off at the far end of the table, arms crossed and watching them. 

“I have been to many, though not all.” Josephine reached up and pointed to a country at the top of the map. “This is Antiva, my home.”

“You are quite far from it.” Catherine reached up to smooth the map a bit. 

“Yes, I am.” Josephine smiled, but Catherine could tell she was a little homesick. “Nevarra is here, where Cassandra comes from. She is quite far from home as well.” Josephine pointed to the neighboring country. Cassandra scowled but said nothing.

“And Cullen is practically home,” Cullen reached past Catherine’s arm to point at a small lake not far from the castle marker. “Although my family leaves in South Reach now, since the Blight.” Catherine smiled at him.

“Where is Leilana from?” Catherine asked, trying to take in as much of the map as she could.

“I will never tell.” Leilana’s voice came from behind them. 

“Good, you are here.” Cassandra uncrossed her arms as Leilana closed the door. “Now we can begin. You say you have information for us?”

“I have a possible lead, nothing more.” Leilana walked to stand beside Cassandra, her arms folded neatly behind her. “There is a Chantry mother who has requested to speak to the Herald.”

“Me?” Catherine gasped. Cullen pulled over a chair for her and she sat, thanking him silently.

“Little is known of the Inquisition, and even less of you,” Leilana gave her a small smile. “This is an opportunity for us to become known outside of this valley.”

“But I don’t... I don’t know...” Catherine stammered.

“You are the best person to send, Herald.” Josephine scribbled notes on her clipboard. “The people look to you for comfort in this time, and the general curiosity about you will have them interested in you.”

“She is in no condition to go. This could be a trap.” Cassandra leaned against the wall and grimaced. “This is an obvious trap.” 

“I feel fine,” Catherine stared at the floor, not being able to contribute further. Physically, she would be able to go meet with a Chantry mother. “Where is she?”

“Mother Giselle is tending to the wounded refugees at the Crossroads in the Hinterlands.” Leilana answered. Cullen stepped forward to point to an area on the map.

“The Hinterlands are not far, but they are besieged by rogue templars and apostate mages.” Cullen stood straight and rested his hands on the pommel of his sword. “I would hope we give you some rudimentary training, in case you come across these wayward groups.”

“Mother Giselle will be there for quite some time - how long do you think it will be until you can go?” Leilana asked Cullen. Cullen did not answer immediately, but instead turned to look at Catherine, who blushed under his gaze.

“A fortnight should be enough time, provided the Herald is well-rested and able to complete training.” Cullen, sensing her discomfort, gave her a small, reassuring smile, which she returned.

“That sounds fair,” Catherine agreed. “I will train hard to prepare.”

“But you will not go alone, Herald.” Cassandra stopped leaning on the wall and walked over to Catherine. “I will accompany you.”

“I greatly appreciate it,” Catherine nodded in acceptance.

“If there are no further issues to discuss, I have some ravens to send.” Leilana bowed her head at the group and left. Josephine followed with a short curtsy.

Catherine slowly stood up, using the chair for support. Cullen made sure she was steady on her feet and then excused himself, having to continue training with the troops. Cassandra stayed. 

“How do you feel today, Herald?” Cassandra asked. “Cullen has told us you have made great strides in healing.”

“I have. Solas has been assisting me.” Catherine took deep breaths. Her breathing still felt a little constricted, but she was definitely better than she had been recently.

“I would like to set up a training regimen with you, if you have some time.” Cassandra opened the door for her, and they excited the War Room into the Chantry.

“Of course. I would like that.” Catherine answered.

Cassandra grinned; Catherine did not like that grin. “Tomorrow morning, we will begin at dawn with running around the lake. You will join me for defense training in the morning. During lunch, Josephine has arranged a sort of school for you, to educate you further about this world and the nobility we are hoping to partner with. Immediately following lunch you’ll join the troops for basic weapons training. And in the evenings, Cullen will give you specialized instruction in the weapon you choose.”

“Are... Are you sure? This sounds like a lot. I do not wish to inconvenience anyone.”

“It is fine. We are asking quite a lot of you, and would prefer for you to not die before completing it.” Cassandra’s grin turned into a smirk, and Catherine had to laugh.

“I would appreciate your keeping me alive.” They excited the Chantry, and Catherine saw the sun dipping below the trees. 

Cassandra walked her back to the cabin in companionable silence. Catherine thought about Varric’s invitation to a drink at the tavern, but knew that Cassandra would frown upon a request for directions, and not just because Varric was the issuer. Catherine had always been pragmatic, and knew that, with her full schedule for the morning, drinking to excess would be inadvisable. But Catherine could be different here, in this dream world: she could be reckless, or careless, or live with wanton abandon. She could have many lovers, she could try any challenge, and she could be different. No one knew her as the docile and meek girl her mother had crafted her into: she could be someone else.

But when they arrived at Catherine’s cabin, and Cassandra bid her good night, Catherine went inside, and reopened the dullest book, and read for a few hours by candlelight until she fell asleep. Docile. Meek. But a familiar action in an unfamiliar place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised to update once a week and have done a terrible job of it. Just for that, I'm going to post two chapters today!
> 
> I enjoy writing about all the beginning stuff. I dunno why.
> 
> Hope you like it!


	6. Chapter 5

Catherine had always been an early riser, ever since she was young. She found herself the next morning awake with the sun, the book about the Chantry finished and forgotten. Dressing in her new clothes, she made her way through the quiet village to the lake’s edge. 

Here, the Breach burned a little brighter in the sky. Catherine winced, as she did every time she remembered her connection to it. It was easy to pretend the Breach didn’t exist when she was locked in a cabin on a sick bed. The lake, frozen during this time of year, reflected the unnatural green light even further.

The training yards were near the lake, and they were silent; the barracks were still, and the only sound Catherine could hear were birds chirping in the trees. The sound was reassuring; birds were familiar. And she was always up early, and so she could always hear their song.

She carefully started to stretch, eyes looking around for Cassandra. She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to wait for Cassandra, or if she could start on her own. Maybe she would take a lap by herself, just to wake up and warm up, and then by that time Cassandra would be ready to begin the training.

Catherine started at a slow pace, barely faster than walking. She concentrated on her breathing, which felt immensely better than yesterday; Solas had left a tonic to drink before bed to help her healing, and she had felt increased energy upon waking up that morning. By focusing on her breaths, in and out, she was able to block her emotions, her confusion, her worry, her fear. She made sure to stay along the perimeter of the ice, turning frequently to be sure she could be seen from Haven’s gate. 

She had never particularly cared for running; she had known many people at university who enjoyed it, but she never had. She would run every morning, though, to keep up her health and get a burst of energy to start her day. Her leg muscles stretched; after days of being confined to a bed, she was happy to be moving around. In. Out. Her arms swung at her sides. She made a loop around the lake: still no Cassandra at the gate. She kept going.

Never straying from the ice’s edge, Catherine started to look around more at the woods. She could see the birds in the trees, and once she approached where they were roosting they would fly off a few trees ahead of her; she would never been able to catch up. Were they doing it on purpose? There were small creatures that ran alongside her as well. She thought they were rabbits, with long floppy ears, but their bodies were more like pigs, and their snouts were long and droopy, like an elephant. She didn’t know what the creatures were, but they followed her and honked in a pleasant way that made her think the little creatures enjoyed it.

Two more laps, each time going just a big faster, and she could hear voices in the training yard as she approached the gate again. Cassandra was still nowhere to be seen, but a few recruits, dressed in clothes similar to hers were stretching their legs. As she approached, their eyes got big, but they decided to join her run. She ran past them and they followed; she could hear the wheezing and puffing behind her. It was laughable that these recruits were in worse physical condition than her, and she had been bedridden for several days. 

Each further lap around the lake brought more recruits to join her; she assumed this must be the morning routine for everyone in training. After she had done ten laps, she stepped to the side and allowed the group to continue on without her. Full of energy, she broke into star jumps, still focusing on her breath. She saw Cullen, standing off to the side of the training yard with presumably his officers having a morning meeting; he did not look her way, and she felt slightly disappointed. He was one of the few people she had had more than one conversation with, and at no time had he threatened to kill her.

Cassandra strolled through the gate, surprised to see Catherine standing there already, let alone sweating and eager to learn.

“Have you gone around the lake with the recruits?” Cassandra asked, one eyebrow raised as the group began to pass them. “I wish to evaluate you.”

“I’ve done ten laps, but I’ll do another.” Catherine smiled, and chased after the recruits. Some of them, feeling competitive, started to run faster to beat her, but she was too quick and her heart was pumping too fast. She pulled away from them, taking the lead easily and making it around the lake in the shortest time yet. She saw Cullen was now watching her, an easy grin on his face.

“I see you are physically in good shape.” Cassandra handed Catherine a small leather bag. Confused, Catherine refused to take it until Cassandra uncorked it and handed it to her again. It was water.

“I’ve always been quick and fast.” Catherine shrugged, drinking most of the water in one gulp. 

Cassandra nodded. “We will need to teach endurance then. It is one thing to release your energy all at one and another to spread it out. Fights are not often won swiftly.”

Cassandra started with a compliment, Catherine thought, to mislead her. And she was completely right: Cassandra’s training was brutal. She was forced around the lake no less than thirty more times, at the fastest pace she could maintain, but was forced to carry something different every time. Once it was a basket of flowers; another time, the largest greatsword in the armory, borrowed from the blacksmith. Cassandra allowed very little time for rest; in battle, there would not be a “time-out” for the participants to rest, although Cassandra did make sure Catherine had a lot of water to drink.

After the hours of Cassandra’s training, and after a stop at an outhouse (another con to this dream world: indoor plumbing was not popular yet, and Catherine vowed to do something about it), Catherine went into Josephine’s small office in the Chantry. There, with a large platter of sandwiches, Josephine began her instruction. The lesson reminded her of her mother’s lectures on sewing and other ladylike habits, but Josephine wasn’t degrading or condescending. Instead, Josephine was patient, outlining how the calendar was structured and telling the time of day and year. She answered all of Catherine’s questions and gave books to read for further information. Catherine couldn’t believe it: at her age getting homework.

Lunch seemed to go by quickly, possibly because Catherine was allowed to sit. After lunch, Catherine headed to the training yard to meet with the recruits. Cullen was not present; instead, a lieutenant gave everyone a wooden sword and shield, and began pairing them up by height. He showed them a simple slash and hack movement, watched as they all performed it facing him, and then instructed them to try it on their partners. Catherine had been paired with a small mousy boy who couldn’t have been more than eighteen. She felt pity for him, until she felt the strength of his blow on her shield and felt like her arm was shattering. She was able to return it in kind, however, and the lieutenant, perhaps spotting the pained look on her face, showed her a blocking technique that used the momentum of the blow to dodge the attack. 

This training was hot and grueling; although it was early winter according to Josephine’s calendar lesson, the sun was shining brightly over their heads and beating down on them. Thankfully, she was not in the full armor some of these recruits were in, and so was able to feel a bit of the chilly breeze as it passed by. Cullen showed up partway through the exercise, calling out instruction and encouragement. He lifted Catherine’s elbow as she prepared to lunge at her partner, and found this simple adjustment planted her partner on the ground. Sheepishly, he got back to his feet, and Catherine swore she could hear his knees knocking together in fear and embarrassment.

Just before dinner, Cullen released the recruits to wash and relax. Catherine hoped she would be included, but she was not; Cullen motioned for her to follow, and he introduced her to Harritt, the blacksmith. He was a large, bald man with a big ginger mustache. He shows them the small armory he has been able to amass since the explosion at the Conclave, and excuses himself to complete a set of bracers before nightfall.

“Have you given any thought to which weapon you would prefer to wield in battle?” Cullen asks as he holds up a longsword, inspecting it.

“I can’t say I have.” Catherine shrugged, biting back a grin. She could see the sun beginning to set, and desperately wanted to bath and lay in bed. This scenario was laughable, in her previous life: she had been the biggest bookworm, and picked last for every team. Now she was in weapons training for battle. 

“I know you are tired,” Cullen replaced the sword in its place and smiled at her, hands resting on the pommel of his sword. “But this is a very important matter.”

She sighed. “I understand. What would you recommend?”

Cullen began to walk around her, surveying the way she held herself. Embarrassed, she hid her face in her hair. “You did very well with the sword and shield, and I myself prefer that style of fighting. That being said, you do not have the build for a warrior. Have you any training with a bow?”

“A little, in PE at secondary school.” Catherine answered, realizing that those things probably made no sense to him. “I was dreadful at it.”

“Hmm...” Cullen mused, returning to the weapons rack. “Did you feel comfortable with the daggers? The ones you used at the Temple?”

Catherine had not thought of the possibility of reusing those daggers. “I did,” she admitted. “I’m small and quick. I would be a good... Um, what do you call one who wields daggers? Dagger-wielder?”

Cullen laughed. “No, a rogue. Forgoing conventional warrior techniques. Not my preferred weapon of choice, but it will do nicely for you. Here they are.” Cullen picked up a leather harness with two daggers sheathed inside. 

He walked slowly to her, holding out the weapons, and she raised her arms. He slid it on carefully, and Catherine’s breath hitched. No, brain, now was a terrible time to think about how attractive the Commander was. Now was a good time to pay attention as to how he is attaching this harness to your back so you can do it yourself and not look like an arsehole.

Cullen adjusted the straps carefully; one of them he pulled too tight and she winced but did not cry out. He noticed the pain, however, and loosened the strap so that it was comfortably placed between her shoulder blades, just on top of the fastener for her bra. Again, brain, bad timing. 

“That should feel comfortable on your shoulders, but secure. If you’re doing any more running around the lake, you don’t want it to slide.”

Catherine laughed. “I have a feeling that lake and I will become very well acquainted.”

Cullen removed the harness from her back, pointing out all of the straps and fasteners to her. She ignored the fluttering in her stomach as he joked easily with her. He handed her the harness to keep, but left the daggers for Harritt to sharpen. 

He offered to escort her to the tavern, where a hot meal would be ready for her. During the short walk, no less than six messengers approached Cullen, with letters to read and orders to sign. Catherine watched the whole process, mystified at how much needed to be done so immediately. Even if she had wanted to ask any questions, she wouldn’t have had time to.

At the tavern door, Catherine turned to see that Cullen, now surrounded by three messengers, was waving to her. “Another time?” He asked, not waiting for an answer, but smiling and walking away. Catherine entered alone, and saw Varric had his own table by the fireplace. He had a large plate of food in front of him.

“Herald!” Varric exclaimed. “I saved you a seat.”

Catherine sat down next to him, avoiding the gazes of everyone who had begun to stare at her. 

“Do I have something on my face?” She asked, sinking into her chair and covering her face with her hair again.

“Don’t mind them. They stare at everything.” Varric filled a mug for her and placed it by her hand. “Drink up.”

Catherine took a small sip of the drink, and gasped. It was beer - but terrible beer at that. More water and piss than beer.

“Not much of a drinker, eh?” Varric laughed. 

“I enjoy drinking, except when it’s dragon piss.” Catherine drained her glass. Varric looked impressed. An elf brought over a large plate of food and placed it in front of her. She barely hesitated before digging in to her meal.

Varric watched, his cup poised by his mouth. “I watched you training today. Are you sure Cassandra doesn’t hate you?”

“That’s easy for you to say. Your weapon of choice is a crossbow.” Catherine paused to breathe.

“You could have a bow. You chose... What did you choose?” 

“The daggers, like before.” Catherine drank more of her piss beer. “It fit best in my hand.”

“And you are pretty deadly with them already. Just don’t slice off any fingers or anything.”

“Your encouragement is overwhelming.” Catherine sat up, her plate and mug empty. “I should go. I feel like I could sleep for days. 

Varric just nodded, continuing to drink his beer. 

Catherine wound her way out of the tavern, past all the villagers who were ogling her. She made it to her cabin, which was dark but welcoming. She pulled off her boots at the door, stripped off all her clothes and climbed into bed. She had a feeling this wouldn’t be the first night she would go to bed at sunset too tired to move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised two chapters today, and I'm going to damn well keep that promise.
> 
> Laying the Cullen/Catherine groundwork, obv. 
> 
> Let me know what you think!


	7. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Catherine begins her training, steels her resolve, and starts her first mission to the Ferelden Hinterlands.

The next few days went by in a blur. Catherine had the same regimen every day: running around the lake with the recruits, training with Cassandra, lunch and lessons with Josephine (and occasionally Leilana), exercises with the recruits, and finally dagger training with Cullen. She was up before the sun most mornings, and could barely remain conscious during her evenings with Cullen, so much so that she had great welts on her forearms from her simply forgetting to attack with her daggers and protecting herself with her arms.

“You have to do better than that, Herald!” Cullen shouted at her after their fourth dusk of training. She could see he was trying not to yell furiously in her face, like she was a fresh-faced recruit, but he was completely right. She needed to do better. Needed to be _better_.

The recruits were still uncomfortable around her, but now it was for a different reason. Before, they were in awe of her as the woman who fell out of the Breach. But now, as she eclipsed them in every exercise, they saw her as not just Andraste’s Herald, but perhaps Andraste herself: she easily carried more weight than they could while running laps around the lake, and quickly improved her strength and stamina while working the sword and shield. After Cullen shouted at her that evening, she went to get healing potions from Solas (throwing angry looks at Adan, the previous healer that she avoided at all costs), rested her forearms on ice, and resolved to improve.

She had never been lazy _per se_ back home, but she had never felt this determination to succeed, even as a doctor. Her mother had always planned on pulling the rug out from under her anyway; she had wanted to be a doctor since she was little, and her mother had allowed her to go to school and study and even begin her residency. She loved being a doctor, helping people feel better, but she knew that her mother was planning to marry her off to someone with “better prospects”, and at any time her parents would pull her from her flat, from her job, from the city proper to live with some man and be his trophy. It wasn’t very motivating, to want to go far but knowing it will never last.

It felt the same here, in a way too. She didn’t know how long she’d be able to train, how long she would be in Haven and Thedas, but she didn’t let that thought slow her down. Somehow, deep down, she couldn’t help but think she was here for a reason, and that she wouldn’t go home, wouldn’t leave this dream world and wake up, until she completed it. And she couldn’t complete it if she continued to get knocked on her arse day after day.

Catherine tried harder. Harder than she had ever tried at anything. No complaining about how she felt, about how tired she was. Cassandra and Cullen never said anything, but she could tell that they were both impressed and concerned. She wanted to do better. She wanted to _be better_.

After the two weeks Cullen had allowed for her training, she no longer needed the healing potions from Solas. She didn’t have nearly as much difficulty with the training. She was outstripping some of Cullen’s most seasoned lieutenants. And, after securing a fine pair of leather and metal bracers from Harritt, had actually succeeded in disarming Cullen with her daggers.

She maintained that it was an accident, that the gravel underfoot had made both of them unstable and that she had knocked the sword out of his hand while falling herself. But he countered that fighters must always prepare for the terrain, and that she was able to right herself and thrust her dagger to his throat before she fell. She had won the match fair and square and, while there was always a great deal of training that could be done, Cullen felt confident enough to send them to the Hinterlands to see Mother Giselle.

Another meeting in the War Room had Josephine and Leilana arguing about who to contact when they get there and which nobility should be flattered. Cassandra was rolling her eyes and making no effort to mask her disgust at the two women. Cullen was seated at the table itself, drawing up some sort of forms and training paperwork, but he had a smirk on his face. Catherine too, seated across from Cullen reading missives Leilana had deemed important for her to read, and she had to hide behind her hair and practically stuff her own fist into her mouth to stop from laughing at Cullen and Cassandra.

It was a pleasant enough meeting; as Catherine was not familiar with any of the main players or with the large missive Divine Justinia had written outlining the aims of the Inquisition, she allowed Cassandra to plot the route they would take to the Crossroads, Josephine and Leilana to outline everyone they would meet on their journey, and Cullen to provide provisions for the journey.

They would set out the day after tomorrow, giving Catherine a much-needed day of rest. She spent most of it in her cabin, sleeping, although she did attend lunch with Josephine for another lesson. She didn’t want to say goodbye to Solas and Varric, who had become good friends to her, but was delighted when she ran into Varric packing his bag and he announced they would be joining her. “I enjoy spending time with you. And it irritated Cassandra, so yeah. Two birds, one stone, right?”

It was one of the idioms she had taught him, in the tavern during supper. Catherine had found that there were some expressions that simply didn’t translate to Thedas, and Varric had been an eager student, ever the author. It was an interesting change of pace to be the teacher for once, instead of the pupil.

That evening before they set off, she went down to Harritt’s workshop to retrieve her daggers. The group planned to leave at first light, and Catherine didn’t want to disturb the blacksmith in the early morning. They chatted for a few moments about her weapons and her training, when he handed her a large rucksack.

“Here. Commissioned by the Commander and the Seeker. Seems you are lacking in armor.” Harritt laughed when Catherine’s face fell.

Armor? Like the big heavy plates some of the recruits wore? How would she be expected to walk, let alone fight, in giant armor like that?

“Don’t worry, it’s leather.” Harritt seemed to read her mind. “You need to be agile to fight with daggers, yes? So this is some simple nug leather, fortified on the bracers to defend with, and some sturdier boots, ones that actually fit you this time. The Ambassador saw fit to throw in some...” Harritt blushed as he finished. “Unmentionables.”

Catherine thanked the blacksmith, just as embarrassed, and fled to her cabin. She took everything out of the sack and laid it all out on her table. There were so many pieces, more than she had thought she would need. Cassandra could help her with the smaller ones, so long as she could figure out how the shirt and pants worked. The “unmentionables” were a few pairs of sturdy underwear and a few bras (she had overheard Threnn the quartermaster call them “breast bands”) that had a ribbon fastener in the front. She repacked the sack for her trip, bringing her training clothes and a few books Josephine had lent her. As she had no personal items, the sack was relatively empty.

The sun had not yet set, and she knew that Varric and some others would be in the tavern, playing that card game Wicked... Something. She could go and join them, but she knew she wouldn’t. Even though this place was a chance for her to be a different person, her social skills were pretty much nonexistent. Sure, she could be physically better, and well-read, but she had given up on learning social skills a long time ago. Instead, she picked up the book Cullen had left her, the history of Ferelden, and sat in bed reading until it was too dark to see.

 

 

The group of four set out just before sunrise. Cullen and Leilana were up to see them off, and both of them reminded Catherine several times to be safe and fight well. A small part of her hoped that they wished her well simply because they liked her, and not just because she was the only person in all of Thedas who could close rifts.

They set off in a straight line, headed for a forward camp established by Leilana’s scouts a few weeks prior. Cassandra led the way, followed by Varric, Catherine, and Solas guarding the rear. Catherine attempted to make small talk with him at the beginning of the walk, but he seemed groggy. “Forgive me, but I am not much of a morning person. I will be dreadfully dull until after lunch.” Solas yawned, and she just smiled. At least he was honest.

Varric, however, _loved_ to talk, and waited a few moments for Catherine to catch up after Solas had denied her conversation.

“So, you seem pretty eager to get out and start Heralding.” Varric smirked. “What makes you think this isn’t some sort of dream? You were pretty convinced it was a dream not that long ago.”

“This is far more pleasant than most of my dreams have been as of late,” Catherine stared at her feet as she walked.

“There’s a giant hole in the sky spitting out demons. You think _this_ is pleasant?” Varric raised an eyebrow. Catherine just glanced at him and continued walking, and Varric whistled. “Man, you’re dark.”

Varric kept by her side, silently for a bit, while they climbed a large hill. Catherine was generous with her water, taking large gulps to remain hydrated. Cassandra was incessant, continually calling out and asking if Catherine needed to rest, or to drink water, or relieve herself (Catherine shuddered, embarrassed at a grown woman asking another grown woman if she had to pee). They stopped for lunch around midday, chewing on bread and cheese, and then continued on until sunset. Cassandra erected two tents, Catherine collected firewood, Solas prepared a meal, and Varric entertained them all with stories from his past.

This is like camping, Catherine thought to herself as she curled up in her sleeping bag (Cassandra called it a bed roll, and it was a bit thicker than a sleeping bag, which was nice). The only problem, she mused, was the camping never _ended_. She never returned to her flat with her laptop, her cell phone, her toilet and _running water_. There were no people at home she missed - just inanimate objects.

They traveled on like this for three more days until reaching the forward camp. There, Catherine was introduced to the lead scout, a small dwarf named Harding. The girl had an easy smile, but Catherine was certain this girl could kill you just as quickly as flashing a smile. Harding reminded them again of the mage/templar fighting going on in and around the Crossroads. Cassandra insisted they leave their belongings at the forward camp and march directly to the Crossroads and meet with Mother Giselle.

“That’s easy for you to say, you actually know how to use your weapon,” Catherine mumbled under her breath to herself It was one thing to charge into hostile territory, and it was another to accidently disarm your commander while almost falling on your arse.

Sure enough, no less than five minutes after leaving behind Scout Harding and the heavily-armed Inquisition troops, they came across apostate mages who began to attack for no reason and with no mercy.

Catherine had heard of the mage-templar conflict from almost everyone she had spoken to at Haven during the past few weeks. Everyone had an opinion on it, and every opinion was slightly different than the one before. From what she had learned from these opinions and from a book Josephine had given her (for _homework_ ) was that the mages were resentful for being told how to control their magic, and the templars were acting more out of fear that the mages would become abominations and wreak havoc on the world than anything else. Logically, the big hole in the sky and the rifts that had cropped up all over the country should be the priority, but it seemed fruitless to point that out.

She held her own in the fight, dodging ice shards and strange runes on the grass to get close and stab at the mages, beheading them quickly and ended the fight. This felt different than killing the demons from the Breach: these mages were _people_. Cullen and his lieutenants who led the training had warned her not to think like that: of course be merciful, they had said, but if someone is attacking with intent to kill, you have to defend yourself and kill back. She had been upset by this discussion, and Josephine and Leilana had noticed during their lesson. When she told them what had bothered her, Leilana gave her chilling advice: _it gets easier_.

Leilana was right, Catherine unhappily thought. They were less than a hour’s walk away from the Crossroads and yet it took them most of the day to get there because they were attacked by both mages and templars at every bend in the road. And while she struggled at the beginning to take a life, thinking it morally wrong and thinking about their _families_ and what they _could have been_ , she felt less and less sympathy as she was attacked by fire, ice, lightning, swords, arrows, and shields. By the time they cleared out the Crossroads, allowing the refugees to come out of hiding, Catherine didn’t feel that bad at all.

Mother Giselle, Catherine knew from Cassandra’s dull book on Chantry hierarchy, was a very high-ranking woman. She reminded Catherine of one of the visiting nuns that had been at her church back home on Bryher when she was a girl: patient and unassuming, yet incredibly intelligent and powerful. Mother Giselle spoke to her privately and asked probing questions about faith and divinity, and yet when the conversation was over (with Mother Giselle agreeing to accompany them back to Haven and assisting Leilana) Catherine felt better and more reassured than at any point during her weeks of training.

The refugees at the Crossroads were desperate for any kind of supplies, and so Varric and Solas separated from the group to hunt wild ram for meat and wool. Cassandra stayed behind to write reports to those in Haven, and Catherine, not having much to do, wandered through the refugees themselves. Some of them were suffering from small wounds received while hiding from the apostate mages and rogue templars, and Catherine was more than happy to assist them. She stole a bottle of clear alcohol from Varric’s bag and cleaned wounds, wrapping them with fresh bandages. Those with more severe injuries were under the care of some mage healers who were more than grateful for the assistance. They offered their supplies to her, and she went through the wounded, tending them as best she could. It wasn’t until Solas came over to get her that she realized she had spent several hours helping people, just like she had wanted to do since she was a little girl.

She felt... Proud of herself, for the first time in a long time. Possibly ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am the literal worst for waiting 4+ months to continue, but with NaNo and the real world... I suck. But I'm still writing, and plan on uploading more frequently. Thanks for reading and all that jazz!


	8. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Catherine camps in the Hinterlands, prepares to travel to Val Royeaux, and lets herself develop a harmless crush on the Commander.

The group stayed in the Hinterlands for almost a month, at Cullen and Josephine’s insistence. Josephine wanted them to meet every single person with noble blood within walking distance, while Cullen made his objectives perfectly clear: seek and destroy the apostate mage and rogue templar strongholds, and secure mounts from Horse Master Dennet. Catherine shuddered at the thought of horses, her childhood fear pressing on her chest, but she did not complain: horses were essential. 

They found a number of rifts in the Hinterlands too, spewing demons and scaring wildlife. Closing each rift was painful, with her hand glowing and seizing up until she wanted to just cut the damn thing off. Her hand didn’t light up frequently now, like it had when she first arrived: it only sparked when she was close to a rift. She would have preferred another method of finding rifts, though. 

Solas spent one afternoon, after they had establishing a new Inquisition camp near Master Dennet’s farm, just studying the mark on her hand. She laid out, reading, while her left hand lay palm up on a small log. Varric came by to laugh. Cassandra came by to scoff, insisting that there were more important things to be done. But Solas studied her hand intricately, and concluded that it was no long actively killing her.

“But it doesn’t tickle either,” Catherine blurted out. Varric laughed loudly, and even Cassandra cracked a smile, possibly for the first time in years. 

Cullen would be pleased with the work we’ve done, and Josephine too, Catherine thought as she was reorganizing her sack to begin the return trip to Haven. Yes, Master Dennet has insisted on further tasks being completed before he will fully support the Inquisition, and yes, Redcliffe has been closed off to any and all visitors, and yes, they did catch a glimpse of what could only be a _dragon_ flying through the sky, but Catherine was pleased with all they had accomplished. 

Catherine was no longer inconspicuous: the refugees who were well enough to travel on and find a new home did so, spreading word of the healing Herald of Andraste and the Inquisition. People flocked to the Crossroads, now that the area had been made safe to travel, hoping to catch sight of the healing Herald. Some refugees wished to join the ranks of the Inquisition, and they were directed to Haven with a letter of acknowledgment from Cassandra or Catherine. 

Cassandra, after the first few days in the Hinterlands, asked if Catherine would write reports on what they had experienced in addition to the reports Cassandra herself was writing. Catherine had obviously never written a field report before, and so instead wrote long, descriptive letters of her observations to Cullen, Josephine, and Leilana. There was a lot to report, and Catherine spent almost an hour every evening detailing the day’s events. If only we had cell phones, or email, or even a ball-point pen, she thought each time she had to dip her quill into an inkpot.

Josephine and Leilana never responded to her letters, so Catherine didn’t know if her information for them was actually informative at all, or if she was wasting her time. Cullen, however, responded to every letter with one of his own, acknowledging her information and including some data from Haven. Catherine found herself awaiting the mid-morning raven and Cullen’s letters during the month she was in the Hinterlands. Despite the fact that they were however-far apart, he was the one to whom she spoke the most.

The journey home took longer than before, because in addition to Mother Giselle traveling with them there were about two dozen or so new recruits for the Inquisition forces. Catherine’s cheeks were sore from all the smiling she had to do to her fellow travelers; they seemed insistent upon walking alongside her and asking her questions about the Fade and Andraste and not caring that her answers were terrible. Varric had more colorful stories, but Solas had more accurate ones.

They met with no fanfare upon reaching Haven. Cassandra left the new recruits in the hands of a lieutenant, and Catherine volunteered to bring Mother Giselle to the Chantry. Varric immediately ran off towards the tavern for a drink, and Solas followed him to head to his cabin and sleep. 

Catherine heard the shouting before she saw it, and flushed red as she saw a group of templars in front of the Chantry shouting obscenities at a group of mages. She was embarrassed that Mother Giselle had to see this, after weeks of treating the wounded who were hurt because of this conflict. Cullen stood between the two groups with a stern face, like a teacher ready to pounce on unruly students. Catherine’s embarrassment faded as she waited for Cullen to intervene.

“Enough!” Cullen bellowed.

“Knight-Captain-” one of the templars went to argue, but Cullen interrupted.

“No. That is not my title. We are not templars any longer. We are all part of the Inquisition!” Cullen was able to defuse the situation with few words, and Catherine was very impressed. 

“And what does that mean, exactly?” Chancellor Roderick wormed his way to the front of the group, and Catherine groaned. From Cullen’s reports, she knew that Roderick had a habit of stirring up trouble and animosity among those templar and mage recruits.

Cullen groaned too. “Back already, Chancellor? Haven’t you done enough?”

Catherine glanced at Mother Giselle, who pursed her lips, clearly displeased at the downright rude manner in which Roderick was speaking to Cullen.

Roderick smirked. “I’m curious, Commander, as to how your Inquisition and its “Herald” will restore order as you’ve promised.”

“Of course you are,” Cullen scoffed, rolling his eyes. Cullen pushed past the Chancellor and pointed at the templars and mages. “Back to your duties, all of you.”

The crowd began to disperse, unhappily and disgruntled. Roderick smirked as he watched the discord wander off. Cullen turned to see Catherine and Mother Giselle standing there.

“Welcome back, Herald.” Cullen gave her a small smile. “I’m sorry to welcome you back in such a manner.”

“Does everyone feel this way? Is there a lot of fighting?” Catherine asked, watching the last of the crowd head out, grimaces still on their faces.

“Of course they do,” Roderick grinned as he joined the group. “It’s what happens when a bunch of heretics try to defy the will of Andraste.”

Cullen practically growled in anger. “Watch your tongue.”

Catherine turned to Cullen. “Why is he still here?”

“He’s toothless. No sense making a martyr of him.”

“I wonder if the Chancellor could escort me into the Chantry,” Mother Giselle’s eyes were steeled, but she spoke calmly and politely.

“I’m sorry to welcome you in such a manner, Revered Mother. Welcome to Haven, Mother Giselle.” Cullen bowed his head to her, and she bowed back. Roderick’s eyes grew wide at the name, and after a few moments of blatant staring, he walked off towards the Chantry without a word. Mother Giselle smirked at Catherine and Cullen, and then followed Chancellor Roderick inside.

“We seem to have left him speechless, don’t we? Is it me?” Catherine mumbled sarcastically, more to herself. Cullen stared at her for a moment, but then laughed. It was the first time she had heard him laugh.

“Not just you, I’m sure.” Cullen smirked. “But I'd prefer to have you defuse the situation. Before I resort to physical violence.”

“Fair enough,” Catherine grinned up at him. “I'm going to return to my cabin. When is the War Council convening?”

“Sunset, Her- Catherine.” Cullen gulped, and nodded as a messenger approached.

Catherine gave him a smile, and backtracked to her cabin. One of the regular servants, a young elven woman, was there pouring warm water in a large basin. Without a word, the elf nodded and left the room. The basin had steam wafting upwards, with a strong floral scent that she didn't recognize. But after a month of traipsing through the Ferelden Hinterlands, a bath was exactly the thing she wanted.

The basin was tall and wide, and her short legs were able to almost stretch out completely. She shed her clothes and sunk into the water. There was a large bar of soap and a rag on the table beside her, as well as Varric's book _The Tale of the Champion_. She settled herself in for a pleasant hour of reading and relaxation.

 

Catherine reluctantly got dressed and prepared for the evening War Council meeting. No one came by to visit her, or to tell her of the exact time, but she assumed that it would be close to sunset, when everyone's duties for the day were complete. She patiently combed through her hair, getting out all the knots and tangles that had amassed in the month away from Haven, and braided it together down her back. Her hair had always been long, but in her time here, with her physical and active lifestyle, it had grown so long that it reached to her hips.

The village had grown quiet as the sun went down, and her walk to the Chantry was uninterrupted. She saw Cullen walking a few paces ahead of her, but his head was down as though he were reading, and so she didn't interrupt. Varric wasn't by his usual place by the campfire, suggesting that he was finding warmth and solace in the tavern – his other haunt.

The Chantry was quiet as she walked in. Mother Giselle was standing by the end of the hallway near the Council meeting room, leading a few reverent recruits in prayer. Mother Giselle nodded to Catherine quietly as she passed. The Council room was ajar, and Catherine could make out a few words of Cassandra's angry argument.

“-Some sort of trap!” Cassandra exclaimed as Catherine walked in. Cullen stood before her in the doorway, and she nearly walked into him as she was wincing from Cassandra's outburst.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, walking around him to stand by Josephine and her ever-present clipboard. 

“Almost everything is a trap, in some manner.” Leilana calmly replied. “This no more so than others.”

Catherine picked up the missive Cullen had laid down on the table, and saw what looked like gibberish to her, but would probably incite Cassandra to anger: a list in a foreign hand of names, and the words “Val Royeaux” scrawled at the bottom. She saw Cullen look at her and she shrugged in response; the letter meant nothing to her except possibly more camping.

“Our herald has proven herself more than capable of protecting herself, so a venture into the capital of Orlais would not be as threatening as you make it seem to be.” Josephine sided with Leilana, making Cassandra huff through her nose.

A capital city would be a pleasant change from a rustic village, Catherine thought to herself. Trips to the city had always been exciting during her childhood, so much so that she had gone to university and medical school in London. She liked the added anonymity the city provided her, and thought it would be nice to not be singled out as the Herald of Andraste for ten minutes.

“Who wants to meet us in Val Royeaux? This list of… Chantry mothers?” Catherine held out the missive to Josephine. 

“These are the ones Mother Giselle believes will be… more welcoming to us.” Josephine accepted the paper from Catherine. “She believes that, should we travel to Val Royeaux, she can get this group to at least speak to us.”

“We should be more concerned with stopping the Breach!” Cassandra snarled, turning away from the group. “Not with changing everyone's mind about us.”

“The simple truth is that we do not have enough influence to approach anyone for aid in closing the Breach.” Cullen admitted, hands resting on the pommel of his sword. “We need to sway others to our cause. The Chantry mothers could help us gain the support of the Templars.”

“The mages would require considerably less work, and would in fact probably prefer if we ignore the Chantry mothers.” Cassandra spoke over her shoulder.

“We should not fight about things beyond our control,” Josephine interrupted, Cullen's mouth open to retaliate. “We should meet with the Chantry mothers, and try to spread our influence as far as possible. The nobles of Val Royeaux could prove useful allies, regardless of the Chantry's view of us.”

“Who would be journeying to Val Royeaux? Josephine, you, I assume.” Catherine asked, nodding to her.

“Oh, no, Herald.” Josephine shook her head. “It is you the Chantry mothers wish to speak to.”

“Hence Cassandra's concern for a trap,” Leilana smirked, glancing over at Cassandra's still-turned back.

Catherine grinned and looked down at the map on the table. “Well, Cassandra should accompany me, to evaluate any potential threats, of course. I am still a newcomer, after all.” A glance at Cullen showed him sharing her smirk.

“I shall tell Mother Giselle you will travel to Val Royeaux in… a week's time? That should give her ample opportunity to gather everyone together.” Josephine nodded to everyone, concluding that her way would be the correct way. “Are there any other issues to which we need to attend? Perhaps we can hear about our influence in the Ferelden Hinterlands?”

Cassandra turned and looked pointedly at Catherine to speak. Catherine sighed, and began recounting her month-long camping story. Cassandra jumped in a few times to point out issues she thought important, like being denied entrance to the village of Redcliffe and the nearby roosting dragon, but for the most part Catherine continued on uninterrupted. 

Cullen immediately authorized the requests of Master Dennet, as he had told Catherine he would in one of their letter exchanges. Catherine had given all this information to them before, in her many reports back to Haven, but they must've wanted to hear it for themselves. She glossed over the dangers they had encountered and eliminated, hoping to not make them panic, but they still looked nervous; Cassandra must've informed them herself.

When Catherine finished, the advisers seemed uneasy. Yes, there had been danger in the Hinterlands, but that was what they had prepared her for. And while she had received a few scratches and bruises, she was remarkably unscathed given her limited experience. The end of her story seemed to be the conclusion of the meeting, for Leilana mumbled something about having ravens to send and left abruptly, Cassandra following swiftly behind. 

Josephine excused herself next, leaving Catherine and Cullen alone, which made Catherine extremely nervous. She felt more like his equal now, having completed her mission in the Hinterlands, and she didn't know where they stood in terms of friendship, given that he was the only correspondence she had had in a month; she supposed she had allowed herself to develop a little crush on the Commander and his written word while she was away. Catherine was staring down at the map, trying to find Val Royeaux in Orlais. Cullen walked to beside her and pointed it out, near the top middle of the map and next to a large body of water. “Capital of Orlais and home of the Divine.”

“Did you serve there? As a Templar?” She asked innocently, but he looked scalded by the question.

“How did you...” He trailed off, looking at her. “No. No, I didn't.”

“The recruit earlier… he called you Knight-Captain.” Catherine looked down at the map again, avoiding his gaze. “I know it's a Templar rank, I read about it. Although the book I read says most don't reach that rank until age thirty-five. You must've be an exemplary soldier.” She was blushing, rambling when she should definitely stop speaking.

“I… yes. I suppose I was.” Cullen swallowed hard and looked down at her.

“Varric told me too that he knew you in Kirkwall.” Catherine's mouth had obviously not gotten the “stop rambling” message, because it continued on. “But I am sure you didn't spend all your time in one place. And you appear to be much younger than thirty-five, although I am notoriously bad at guessing ages.”

Cullen mercifully laughed, halting her rambling, and Catherine let out the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. “I am not much younger, no. I am thirty-one. I became Knight-Captain at twenty-seven.”

“Ah, twenty-seven. A popular age.” Catherine laughed to herself, smoothing out the wrinkled edges of the map. “Varric says he published his first novel at twenty-seven. You became Knight-Captain at twenty-seven. And I… I became the Herald of Andraste at twenty-seven. A good age, don't you think?” 

“An excellent one, I'm sure.” Cullen smiled at her, a warm smile which she returned. “A thorough investigation should be completed as to other accomplishments done at this age.”

“A mission I will complete, my Commander.” Catherine gave one of the fist-over-heart salutes, and Cullen laughed louder. They both laughed together, enjoying the moment, when Josephine walked back into the room to reclaim some papers. She looked shocked to see the Commander and the Herald laughing together, Cullen clutching his torso and Catherine leaning over the desk. 

Catherine straightened up, brushing the stray hair out of her face. “I'm sorry to disrupt you, Josephine.”

“No, no, no trouble at all. I do need to borrow you, Commander, for a letter I'm putting together. At your earliest convenience, of course.” Josephine gave them a strange smirk.

“I'll go now, if that's all right.” Cullen gave a nod to Catherine. “Will you be at the morning exercises?”

Catherine shrugged; she had gotten used to sleeping in past dawn in the Hinterlands. “We'll see.”

“Good evening, then.” Cullen nodded again and followed Josephine out. “By the way, Lady Ambassador, what were you doing in your life at the age of twenty-seven?”

Catherine bit back a laugh as she looked back down at the map. Val Royeaux. The capital of the empire. A new place to see. One further step on her journey home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter chapter this time. I don't want to write out every. single. thing. but I want to make sure I get all the good stuff in. And kinda just want to get to Skyhold, where I have a lot more ideas.
> 
> I also made Catherine a bit older than I usually see in fanfics. It seemed strange to me that a twenty-two year old would be so... well adjusted. 
> 
> Thanks for the continued love/support!

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Dragon Age fanfic both in general and on this site, so I hope you enjoy it!


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